The Storyteller
by michael1812
Summary: 1917 France. A military hospital. Amy is in dire need of comfort after an accident so the Doctor tells her a story. Twice upon a time... in Paris with pirates, a former Time-Agent, a stolen tower, an empire of death... and a man without a name.
1. Legs Grow Back?

He called her name, but she didn't hear him. She was left a bit whoozy. Worst hangover ever.

"Yes, I can hear you!" she said drifting, rubbing her eyes, but her hands seemed not to find its target.

"What happened Doctor?" she asked and his lingering thoughts failed to come up with a quick explanation.

"You don't want to know," the Doctor said.

Amy insisted and the Doctor relented, thinking the best way to deal with it would be to just tell her and see how it went from there.

"It's the year 1917 and you're in a hospital," the Doctor said gauging her reaction. "And...you were shot. Well, that's the easy answer. Better answer would be 'stepped on a mine'."

Before Amy could even slip a rude and confused word from her lips the Doctor shushed her with a raised finger which he then used to tap the end of her right leg. Her knee.

"Don't worry. These lovely French nurses will fix you right up. We'll only have to wait until your leg grows back."

Bombs were flying in the distance and somewhere nearby glass was shattering whilst the Doctor smiled as if all their worries were over.

"Doctor..." she growled.

"Oh, don't be so grumpy. We're safe!" the Doctor said.

"We're in the first world war, Doctor!" Amy groaned through clenched teeth. She would've kicked him if she had a leg to kick him with. The left one just couldn't reach.

"What do you mean the _first_?" a grizzly war veteran with an eyepatch mumbled in a nearby bed. The Doctor quickly closed the curtains around them.

"Keep your voice down." the Doctor said and Amy stopped herself from ripping his bow tie off.

"It'll grow back," he added with a joyful pat on her pained knee. "You should consider yourself lucky. 17 hours is all it takes for the Saloccian treatment to complete."

He took a vile from his pocket filled with something green and he sprinkled it across her knee like magic dust. Three doses in six hours would do the trick.

"There we go. Don't tell everyone or they'll all want a piece. We shouldn't change history too much...but whatever! Lizards in trenches, huh? Who would've thought?" the Doctor grinned like an idiot.

"Bloody fantastic," Amy said grumpily. "It isn't worth getting my leg blown off though."

"They were kind enough to lend us some bioregenerative substances for your leg. They really loved you."

"Like salamanders, my leg is going to grow back?"

"Yep," the Doctor answered excited.

"Doesn't that take months?"

"Nope. Courtesy of the finest Saloccian medical technology this day and age. 17 hours. Then we'll head back to the TARDIS, grab some R&R and who knows what else?"

"No more wars," Amy said.

"No more wars," the Doctor agreed. "I hate wars. Problem is, there isn't an age of mankind that doesn't have any. Always a war going on somewhere.

"And there's so many good years with wars in them as well, so you can't avoid them. Did you know just last year, no two years ago, Christmas Eve of 1915, there was a truce between German and British soldiers on the front line.

"They just stopped fighting and sang carols together. They even played football. That's a magical moment right there. A-mazing. I wish I could've been there, and who knows? Maybe I was."

Amy pushed the back of her head back into the pillow and forced her eyes shut, trying to ignore the pain and the image of a legless knee. Her knee.

"Seventeen hours, Doctor. I can't do seventeen hours."

"Sure you can! All you need is a good story. Haven't you ever sat through a Lord of the Rings marathon? Nine hours of cinematic genius and then I'm not even mentioning the extended editions. Then you're halfway there. I could spend the last 8 or 7 hours telling stories about Tolkien. Now there was a wonderful chap..."

His eyes already turned to the heavens reminiscing older future times as he sat down adjusting his tweed jacket, but Amy wouldn't have any of it yet.

"Stop blabbering, Doctor. My ears hurt," Amy said. "You could probably tell stories about every famous person from old Earth history. Or new."

The Doctor pondered a little, pouting. "Well, I can."

Amy leaned back and pulled her pillow from under her head, raising it above her head only to stuff her face in it.

"Charlie Chaplin!" the Doctor suddenly said. "Now there's one I haven't met yet! He could be our next stop? What'd you say? Amy?"

He poked the pillow with a crooked finger, prodding but getting no reply.

"Amy, are you all right?" he asked.

"Go away," a muffled voice came from under the pillow.

"Seventeen hours is a lot of time to pass on your own, especially in the middle of a war. I'm not leaving you, Amy. I did promise you, remember?"

"Please stop talking."

Another bomb whistled through the air and landed far away and the shockwave shook the ground and Amy's bed only slightly this time.

"Tell you what," the Doctor said. "I'll tell you a story. A good story. You'll like it."

"I'm not in the mood," Amy said, crawling out of her hiding place under the pillow. "Please, just take me home."

"It's traumatizing. I understand," the Doctor said solemn. "You've got a lot to be sad about."

"I know!"

"In some ways more than others. _Stop scratching it you're making it worse."_

Amy surrendered with a groan.

"Fine, what's the story about? It better not be depressing." she said and the Doctor rubbed his hands smugly. Then she grabbed his arm.

"Wait, am I in it?"

The Doctor allowed it.

"Yes, you are," the Doctor said and he started telling his story. "You, me and a noise. A strange noise, like static, following us around across time and space. Following the TARDIS. Like a telemarketer during dinner. Very rudely."

"Is there a murder involved?"

"There usually is," the Doctor confirmed. "Now stop interrupting me. Do I start interrupting you when you're telling a story?"

"Yes," Amy spoke without a hitch.

"Exactly," the Doctor said. "Now then, where was I? Oh, I remember. It was the year of Neverwas in the time of Neverwhen..."


	2. Monocles Are Cool

We ignored the noise and instead chose to disrespect the privacy of a thousand immortal kings resting on the Cemetery World of Beta-Lemon One, not the most ominous name, I'll admit.

The kings were happy to let us leave with a promise to keep their presence a secret. Oops.

We found a nice Parissiene restaurant at the end of the solar system, run by a lovely Lunar couple named Crown and Derek Maldo. I only wish their food had been as lovely as their hospitality. You know I'm choosy, when I choose to be.

I took it upon myself to take you to the best restaurant I knew. The real deal, as it were.

The real Paris.

The TARDIS wheezed a bit, while I dragged you to a place where they serve the best bouillabasse in the entire universe, only to find out it hadn't been built yet. We were half a century early. I knew that because the air tasted like iron. And you pointed out that the Eiffeltower was still under construction. You've always had a keen eye. It's why the undead kings were so keen upon prying it from your skull, but that's all sand under the bridge, or water on the beach, or whatever it was.

The TARDIS was recalibrating. Its blue exterior felt prickling to the touch. We couldn't leave just yet, so you persuaded me to visit the Eiffel Tower.

You said you'd never been to the top floor of the Eiffel Tower before. Well, now you'd be the first.

I borrowed a newspaper from a passing posh Frenchmen with a monocle -monocles are cool-which confirmed my suspicions: it was the year of 1889.

**"But you said your story's made up?"** Amy said.

Well, yes, I'm making it up as I go along. So, please don't distract me. Do feel free to point out any flaws in my narrative though and stop me if I get too focused on the details. That tends to happen. Now then!

There it was! The famous Exposition Universelle. The 100th year anniversary of the storming of the Bastille. I was in there you know. I was one of the 'lunatics'.

We approached it from the bridge over the Seine and looked up to see many kites and balloons in the sky with men taking photos of the fair. Their photos would live on to become more famous then their photographers, let me tell you that.

The Eiffel Tower. What a marvellous piece of engineering. Thomas Edison called it a so gigantic and original specimen of modern engineering. Or he will call it that several months from now.

There's the famous saying that Hitler conquered France, but he did not conquer the Eiffel Tower. Mind you, he's just been born.

"Hitler?" you remarked. "Are we going to go to it or aren't we? I hear there's a restaurant up top."

"Second floor," I replied. I put a finger in my mouth and stuck it in the air to feel the wind. There was a smell of manure, now that wasn't very pretty, and a hint of paint.

"It sways in the breeze," I said looking up at the tower at the far end of the Champs-Élysées. "I love Paris!"

I outstretched my arms in joy and nearly knocked over a passing gentlemen who cursed in his mother tongue.

"I just don't like the French," I addded and you laughed just as you did now. Then I saved you from being run over by a carriage. You should be more careful where you put those legs of yours...

Let's pick up the pace. It was the 6th of May 1889. Pablo Picasso is 8 years old, living in Spain. The Moulin Rouge is being constructed as we speak. Vincent Van Gogh will paint his famous Starry Night in a month from now. The Titanic will sink 23 years from now.

27 years from now I'll be telling this story...

Also, a very nice baker named Raffaele Esposito invents the Pizza Margherita. I told him to add the cheese. Works wonders for the flavour!

I was going to take a peek at the rest of the rather famous exposition, but you were quite keen on dragging me to the main event. Le Tour Eiffel.

"Stop trying to speak French!" You said. I once used to have a knack for it. Pity, really.

But there we were ascending up the leg of the tower alongside thirty people. Ooh, I got shivers.

"So exciting!" you said, clutching my arm.

"300 steelworkers worked on this for 2 years," I said, but you wouldn't listen. "A work of genius. I can't imagine why they hate it so much."

"Who does?" You asked and I reminded you of the protesters we saw on our way into the Exposition.

**"You're kidding. It's not that ugly, is it?"**

"Not to you. You're used to it by now. You've seen it in movies and photos and maybe even in real life in the future. By now you can't possibly picture France without the Eiffel Tower, but for a long time there wasn't one. There was just...something else."

"Will we meet Eiffel? The architect?" You asked, which was very much a surprise.

"We might," I said. "But I have to admit. I have no idea what he looks like. He probably has a moustache. Everyone around here seems to have facial hair. Should I grow a moustache?"

"Over my dead body," you said chipper. "Just sayin'."

We ascended higher and higher and reached the first level, whilst bumping heads with the men and women that crowded the elevator. And the stench! While we'd had just finally escaped the plumes of manure coming from the city!

Although that's probably just the horses. I can't wait for Benz to invent the automobile.

Mind you, perhaps he shouldn't have.

"Don't spoil it, Doctor," You said wisely. "Stop thinking about it and just enjoy the view!"

And you know what, Amy? You were absolutely right.

Trouble is, what could've been a splendidly sunny afternoon in 19th century Paris was somewhat tainted by the body of a young footman found dead underneath a metal bulkhead of the tower, onto which two words were scratched violently. A message.

It read: _"No One"_.

Yes, I'd said there'd be a murder, didn't I?


	3. Murder, He Narrated

It was a gunshot that killed him. A blaster. Laser residu on the scorch marks on the young footman's uniform told me all I needed to know.

It was the right time period. Authentic clothing. I checked, because I always check. I'm a time-traveller. I never know what time-period I end up in. So I check. Twice.

And now again. His hands were cold. His pupils dilated. He wasn't dead long, maybe twenty minutes. Maybe more. His fingernails were clean but there was a scar on his left hand. Not a post-mortem addition given the tissue had already healed most of it.

A few blips with the sonic screwdriver didn't tell me much more than I already knew. He couldn't have been older than 18 when he died. He had a kind face in death. The boy looked like he was merely sleeping.

Then you were the second to notice what I was already tracing in the air with a wet finger. I could practically taste it.

"What's that smell?"

Oh, Amy you were so close. Think about it. This is the busiest place in all of Paris. The world's first true capital of a connected Earth. The centre of arts and humanities...and dung apparantly.

"It's dung," I said grumpy. Snarky's a better word. "It's always dung. It's Paris. That's what all the perfume's for. To cover up the dung. What is that smell?"

"You smell it too?" you said.

It was cold. I hadn't realized how cold it was until you made me focus on the air.

I think I almost lost my mind. Those people were yelling -screaming- while I was trying to solve a murder. Calling for the police while I just flipped them my nifty psychic paper. Those stubborn French!

"Le Gendarme can't help you now!" I said, trying to sonic air, but it didn't work. Sonic's not good with gasses. It's better with signals. It's better with...

My mind found the answer. Put it together, just like *that* [snaps his fingers]. Oh, Amy, Amy Amy. Have you figured it out yet? It's so easy, it's staring right in front of you, yet it isn't. It can't obviously. But it's there. Right in the air. _A gap._

The murderer couldn't have killed him in plain sight. There were too many servants running around. Security. Butlers and cooks and construction workers and men with monocles. But they were all too busy. All too distracted..

But why go through all this trouble, I thought. Unless...

"They're staring at us, Doctor," you said to me. They were like chickens, running around headless squirting blood. Blood!

"No, they're staring at _me_," I said. There was a dead man on the floor and I was spinning theories.

"_No-one_, Doctor. What does it mean?"

"One question at a time, Amy. There's too many people, too many noises...will everyone PLEASE BE QUIET! I'm trying to think!"

The headless chickens stopped long enough for me to breathe.

I didn't care about the stares. I was missing something. I would find out soon.

"It's a teleport, Amy," I finally said. "Someone teleported on the Eiffel Tower, put the body here, left their message and left. Why? Is he making a statement? A protest? A message? A message to whom? No-one hates the Eiffel Tower that much, do they?"

I found the exact spot where he teleported with another flick of the sonic. Detected an anomaly in the air like a low pressure field that drew all the heat toward it. A tiny crack in reality that was filling up. Something had disturbed the atoms on that very spot. Removed it, like one would scoop a drop of water from the ocean. The signal was fading.

I checked the sonic's readouts. If this was location A, location B's far away. But what if this was location B, not A? C, not D? X, Y, Z. The murderer came here, but never left.

The murderer's still here.

"Amy, don't be alarmed," I said to you.

"I think they're sending up the police," you said.

"Good. That's good. Now just don't be alarmed."

"They're gonna know you touched the body, Doctor,"

"Yes, well...ah. Of course," I said, then I remembered. "But I've got this."

I showed her my psychic paper. My get-out-of-jail-free card. Always works like a charm.

Then the next thing I knew we were behind bars.

"Works like a charm eh?" you said. I can always count on you to kick a man once he's down.

**"Oi!"** Amy shot back from her bed in 1917.

I was peeved. I get like that sometimes. Especially when they take away my screwdriver.

I paced around the cell over and over while you just clung to the bars looking like Charlie Chaplin's tramp, only without the moustache.

**"You're the tramp, Doctor! Not me,"** Amy in the bed replied.

The Doctor by the bed pondered looking up at the ceiling with an introspective smile. "True..."

But Charlie Chaplin had only been born a month ago.

"Can't you ring Harry Houdini?" the Amy in the cell asked. "Maybe he could get us out."

"Quite possibly," I said to you. "Problem is, he's fifteen."

"Well, I'm not," you said and from someplace you revealed a pin of some sort, possibly a hairpin, which you started using to pick the lock.

"It won't work!" I said. "We need to talk to whoever's in charge! Warn them that there's a man out there with, quite possibly, very dangerous alien tech. Because this day isn't random! And if this day isn't random, then that message inscribed next to the body isn't a message, it's a threat!

And if it's a threat, then we're in grave danger!"

I stopped for breath and looked up.

I hadn't noticed the cell doors opening. There was a neatly dressed bearded man standing in the doorway holding a pocket watch. He did have a moustache in fact, but also a beard. Slightly turning grey. He looked good for his age.

I couldn't help but feel giddy. What an engineer! What a vision! The inner support structure of the Statue of Liberty, I mean come on!

"Hello...?" you said. You always were a bit slow.

"Mr. Gustave Eiffel! I cannot tell you how pleased I am to meet you!" I said behind the bars of my cell.

Gustave looked grumpy. I immediately felt the exact opposite.

"I cannot say the same."

"Well, you don't know me yet. Allow me to introduce myself..."

"Doctor, it's him!" you suddenly cried.

"Who?"

It was the footman. The boy. The 18-year old boy with the blastermarks. The dead boy. Without the scorch marks. Blastermarks. Without the deadness. Without the scar!

Standing right next to Gustave Eiffel.

"Doctor? How is this possible?" you asked. "Why isn't he dead?"

"I'm not dead!" the boy cried out nervously. He couldn't bear to look at us. He knew.

He knew we saw his dead body. He'd seen it too.

"This is my footman. Bérnard," Gustave then said. "Perhaps you wouldn't mind explaining..."

"You want me to explain why a man just found dead on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower is very much alive in front of me?" I interjected.

I couldn't resist finishing his sentence.

"Twins?" you said. Oh, Amy...

That would've been too easy.


	4. Network

You might not know this. You should.

There's over 190 miles of subterranean tunnels, a network of catacombs, 18 feet underneath the streets of Paris. Most of it's just tunnels except some of it isn't. Some of it's filled with dead people.

Now...In your time it's mostly an attraction of tourists, such as ourselves, and others drawn to the 'macabre'.

Such as ourselves.

But there was a different sort of man fleeing into those dark tunnels in the middle of the day that day. A man who preferred shadows to sunlight, a man who wasn't deterred by the dead, and in particular: a man who didn't want to be found.

And yet there was another sort of man hunting him. A prisoner in chains, much like ourselves, but it wasn't me.

Now bear with me because I wasn't actually there for this part of the story. I might actually make some of it up as I go along but I'll try to restrain myself.

He was a brave man, the hunter I mean, not the hunted, and a good man too, although he sometimes needs a good nudge in the right direction.

His name remains a mystery (even to me) but he lets them call him Jack.

Jack the hunter. Jack the mercenary. Jack the killer. Jack the prisoner!

"Keep moving," a prissy voice said which was a girl, a neat blonde with her hair stuck up, wrapped in a bundle. You know.

Let's call her Claire. Or better yet Michelle. Yeah, definitely Michelle.

She was winding up one of those wind-up flashlights in the dark trying to shed some light into the tunnels and just then it shines directly into the face of our new protagonist. Handsome man in a grey longcoat. American.

"You're not afraid of the dark, are you?" he said to her, or at least I imagined he could've said something as clichéd to her as that trying to flirt with her I suppose. Oh, humans never change.

"No, I'm afraid of whatever's in the dark."

**Doctor, why is he chained?**

I'm getting to that. You see, there's a lot of backstory you're missing out here, Amy. Or is it forwardstory? No, that isn't a word.

Jack was a man born in the future, trapped in the past, working for the British but obviously imprisoned by the French. They have their own Torchwood you know.

**You do realize that I have no idea what you're talking about, right? **

Yes. So the tunnels stretched on and on into darkness and most of them were hundreds of years old. Just picture it Amy, dragging your feet through a layer of muddy water through a system of dark catacombs knowing that when you get lost you die.

But there was a man out there. Jack and Claire were following his heat signature through the tunnels and they were, quite frankly, at the mercy of a tiny device in their hands.

"You know what they said would happen when the light goes out." Jack said to her and he was indeed referring to the device in her hand. As her prisoner he wasn't allowed to carry anything, not even a weapon, thankfully.

"The signature's stopped," Claire said.

"That's because we stopped moving." Jack rightly pointed out. He also saw how the bottoms of her designer clothes were drenched in water.

"This place is a maze, Claire," he said rattling the metal cuffs on his wrists. "If you would just give me my vortex manipulator I could use it to find a way out of this place!"

To answer his question, Michelle pressed a handgun in his neck. Ah, yes! There were two girls, I remember now.

Two girls. There was Claire. And there was Michelle. Claire's the prissy one. Michelle's the one with the gun.

"The moment you switch on your vortex manipulator you'll either teleport away or activate a homing beacon which will send the English straight to us."

"Hey," Jack objected. "You enlisted my help with this. You wanted my advice. I'm giving it. There's technology that can help us and I'm the only one who can use it. Do the math."

"Yes," Michelle said. "What is three minus one?" She might've had a tiny dash of a French accent. The TARDIS does that sometimes, I don't know why.

She cocked the pistol and Jack gave a weak smile.

"The teleport doesn't even work."

"We won't take your work for it." Michelle said and she pushed him on. "Let's go."

Claire agreed. "I can't get a signal down here. We have to find the others and tell them what we've found."

They hadn't found anything but their sense of purpose kept them going. Hope's a good thing, especially down there.

Of course, they didn't know that what they hadn't found was about to find them, but they weren't going to find that out until Claire had rewound the flashlight again.

Michelle lit a match. The signature they'd been tracking all over Paris, starting at the newly erected metal tower at the World Fair, was out of their reach, but in the light of her match she saw a hand reaching toward her. A big hand. A big, hairy, fleshy hand attached to a big and hairy, fleshy face with yellow eyes and yellow teeth.

Human, don't worry. And he wasn't alone. Yet, neither was Jack.

The organization that had sent them on this mission was bigger than anyone could've imagined. More powerful and rich than any other corporation in France, with people everywhere and technology years ahead of its time. Because of them Paris deserved to be called the capitol of the world at that time.

Yet they didn't stand a chance against me.

I was a prisoner all right. A prisoner of my own mind! Something was staring me right in the face, something that was happening right underneath the surface but I just couldn't see it.

_No-one._ What did it mean? Was it a message? A warning? A threat?

They took us from our cell one at a time and divided us into different rooms. Mine was large and shiny with a large mirror on the wall, like a ballroom. One where you could practice ballet. And they had me waiting there for what felt like hours.

It was completely empty with no tables or chairs. Just two giant barred windows from which the bright afternoon shone down on us. Time was running out.

I'd demanded to speak to Gustave and his young footman again because I knew they had to carry the pieces of the puzzle I was missing, or at least some of them.

"I was told you identify yourself as a doctor," Gustave told me.

I wondered if he was a member of this French Torchwood, like Freemasonry, a secret organization, but it didn't matter if I didn't sort out what was going on. There was danger. I could feel it. I could smell it. Something was afoot.

"Thé Doctor," I corrected him and I stopped pacing in circles for a moment. I love introductions. "My friend's Amy Pond. I need to know if she's okay!"

"She's well taken care of," Gustave replied courtly with a hand on the young man's shoulder. The kid was slightly taller.

Bernárd. That was his name. What did he have to do with it? Why him?

"You're supposed to be dead," I said to him and I took a step toward him. I had to see his face. He didn't like it up close and personal but no-one did. _No-one._

It was rude but someone had to do it.

Eyes normal. Seemed to be the right age. Right skin, right ears. Why was he a perfectly normal average human being? Sadly, he was a perfect match for the body we found atop the Tower and there was one simple explanation, but I needed to be sure.

The boy looked away and stepped back and Gustave stepped in to shield him from my sight.

"Did you examine the body?" Gustave asked me, taking articulated deep breaths. They were both getting annoyed by me. They'd been interrogated and prodded enough that morning.

'Doctor', that's the first thing he had said. He wanted to know my medical opinion. Didn't they have their own doctors? Didn't he trust them? Maybe he wasn't part of it. Maybe he was just helping the boy...

"Yes, I did. Did you touch it?" I asked.

"I'm sorry?" Gustave asked.

"Not you, Gustave, I'm sorry," I said. "I'm asking Bérnard."

The boy swallowed as he didn't know what to say (or perhaps he didn't want to say it) and I waited. Come on, boy. Speak up. Don't be afraid. I probably should've used those words.

I watched the boy struggle. Perhaps he was superstitious. Or even worse...

"Touch it?" Bérnard asked.

"The body. Did you touch it?" I asked and before he'd even answered "Yes." I had my next question ready.

"What happened? Was there a spark?"

"There was," Bérnard said. "How did you...?"

"You need to let me out of here!" I told Gustave. "Paris might be in serious danger. The world might be in serious danger. The future hangs in the balance!"

I'd startled Gustave. It wasn't supposed to sound so dramatic, but if I'd known the truth I would've been much louder.

"I can save this boy's life," I added and Gustave's teary eyes perked up to look at mine. I could see the secret right there and in the grip he'd had on the boy's shoulder.

"How do we know we can trust you?" he asked.

I thought for a bit as I peered into his eyes, smiling, knowing that the truth had already dawned on me before I started thinking about the answer to his question.

"You don't," I said.

Gustave took a deep breath, contemplated a decision and then walked away.

He was going to ask for my release and yours. I just knew it.

"The British regard him as the most dangerous man in the entire universe," Gustave told the police constable. "But we are going to need him. Mon dieu, we need him."


	5. Guess Who

A word marked the beginning of a series of events throughout Paris that had many messengers hop from one carriage to another. In one instance they threw a suitcase with documents from one moving carriage to another as they passed each other on the road.

Secret agents in long raincoats running from one black door to another. Orders in code were being relayed across wireless radio via morse code while extra information was being acquired.

Extra information about me, carried around the French capital chained to a man's wrist. It came with a warning.

He and I both arrived in the general's office at the same time. He was a sweaty man but granted he had travelled a long way in a heck of a short time. He'd only just stepped off the train judging by his travelling cloak.

"My name's Simon de Leeuw," he said and I watched him nervously brush his curly moustache. I couldn't help but mimick his motion and wonder how I would look with a moustache.

"I'm from LONGBOW."

The man behind the desk perked up and so did I. Something happened. I think I missed it.

My mind had to catch up: "Sorry, you said 'Longbow', didn't you?"

The general revealed a small metal box which he took out from his desk drawer and which he placed in front of him and in the same vein Simon placed his suitcase upon the desk in front of it. An exchange was being made.

"Yes, I did," he said and he went on to ignore me. Very rude and quite amusing.

"I've come with the file on the Doctor as requested but I must add this warning."

The general cleared his throat. He was a man of few words but with an imposing gaze but Simon luckily was oblivious to its message.

"Wherever he is right now, the Doctor brings darkness and destruction in his wake. Death is his only constant companion."

The general froze but Simon was so nervous he did not even see it. He took the key from the general's hand, desperate to get the suitcase from his wrist and out of his care.

"Where is he, general?" he asked. Oh, this was brilliant.

The general took great care not to emphasize any embarrasment or mockery in his non-gesture.

"He is standing right next to you."

The man's neck flinched towards me and I couldn't help but strike a pose.

"Hello." I smiled. The man was flabbergasted. Who wouldn't be? "Death and destruction, really? Who'd you get that from, the Daleks?"

Now it was my turn to ignore him. Or make fun of his moustache.

"The Doctor is our prisoner," the general said. His nonchalance offended me.

"He is under our control."

He knew I hated it when he said that. That's why his penetrating gaze had been aimed at me this time. To make sure I got the message.

So I sent one back. No morse code required or secret messages. This was a plain and simple message. Both wrists placed upon the desk. Eye to eye. One man to another.

"If anything happens to Amy Pond...anything at all..." I said.

The general understood. "...then what?"

He called my bluff, but if there's one thing you should know about me, is that I never bluff.

"Sir!" Simon said and the general's eyes were drawn toward the representative of the LONGBOW intelligence agency from Brussels.

In the corner of my eye I saw the general's hand linger upon the unread documents within the suitcase. I waited until his eyes looked back into mine. A second in the general's eyes looked like a lifetime of change.

"Lieutenant!" he cried out when I still didn't look away. Simon swallowed.

Then two soldiers grabbed my upper arms and carried me away.

"It was nice meeting you, Simon!" I cried out before the door shut. I think I saw him clutching his necklace again.

The soldiers roughened up my tweed jacket with their grip though. I had to put a stop to that before any wrinkles set in. The angels got my first jacket, as you may remember -actually I hope you do- and I've only got 500 spares. I have to be careful.

The soldiers were looking at me odd and I realized they were clearly affected by the words uttered in the general's office.

"It's not my fault, really," I told them while straightening my jacket and bow tie. "Things sort of happen..."

The words caught a certain hidden meaning because as I lifted my head up to bask in those rare 1889 Parissiene afternoon rays of sunlight I saw the figure of the Eiffeltower etched against the clear bright sky, protruding from the layer of grounded buildings surrounding it as if it was meant to be there...

"...and they always will," I added. A pecular silence had fallen and I eyed the soldiers who were hesitant to touch me again. "Come along then!"

We raced down the helical staircase.

"Just like old times, eh?"

Silly me. The old times hadn't even begun yet.

**What about me, Doctor? What happened to me?**

The Doctor was pleased that his story had had Amy hooked.

"I'm getting to it. Stop fidgeting with your leg. It's fine. Don't worry about it."

"Is it growing back yet?" Amy in the bed asked and the Doctor sighed.

"If you keep looking at it, Amy, it'll only take longer," he told her.

"Just look at it!" she insisted rubbing her leg. "Any... growth?"

With a cautious finger he lifted the blanket, peeked underneath at Amy's leg, then let it fall before quickly retreating on to his stool whilst rubbing his hands together awkwardly. Amy caught him changing the subject with his usual blank smile.

"Look," he explained to comfort her. "You don't want to rush limb regeneration. It'll do the trick, but on its own time. Trust me, I know. Now where was I?"

"Doctor!"

"WHAT?"

"That noise."

"What noise?" the Doctor asked and Amy slapped his arm. "Ow!"

"The noise in the beginning. Of your story. It just came and went!" she said, rocking her head along with her words to stress their importance. Or silliness. "What happened to it?"

"I don't know yet," the Doctor admitted. "I did say I was making this story up as I went. It might've slipped my mind."

"Hmmm," Amy said. "You're lying."

"I'm improvising!" the Doctor disagreed. "Maybe I'll work it into the story. Who knows?"

**Get on with it then.**

You have to remember it was a different time back then. Just think. The Geneva convention was only adopted 40 years ago and let's not talk about civil rights...now where was I?

Alexandre Gustav Eiffel was a good man but he wasn't perfect. He was an old man and of course, so was I.

His wife had died twelve years ago and he never remarried but he took you in, Amy, and made sure that despite being a hostage that you were treated well.

"Don't be hysterical, girl." he said to you as you stepped from the carriage dressed in full contemporary clothing. But of course you are used to strange outfits, aren't you Amy?

**Shut up.**

"I look like my grandmother," you said to him and he smiled. "Or my great-great grandmother..."

You were doing maths in your mind as you stepped from the carriage, whilst being escorted by armed personnel at all times. 1889 was a hundred years before you were born...

"The Doctor sure does travel with strange folk..." Gustave spoke and of course you couldn't let that slide past unnoticed.

"Are you prejudging me?"

"No," he spoke wise. "I am judging."

You felt embarassed for being dressed like that in public and the fact that every other woman around you was wearing similar clothes didn't end this. It actually made it worse.

"Doctor," I imagined you muttering to yourself. "You're só going to pay for this."

After tripping and stumbling over your new dress you found yourself in your new golden cage. A moderately luxurious apartment somewhere in the centre of the city. A place as far away from me as possible but still close enough to see the Eiffel Tower.

You didn't know it but we were looking at it from different points in Paris at the exact same time. I think we both felt what was coming.

You glanced up at the rows of chimney stacked houses all along the street one final time before being nudged into the house at the butt of a rifle.

"Yeah, all right. I'm walking!"

There were photographs of a family throughout the hallway of the house. The photos weren't as grey and faded as you remembered them to be, but that was of course the hand of time at work.

"I'm in the past," you suddenly realized.

You passed photo after photo and you remembered your first thought as you stepped from the carriage: "I look like my grandmother."

It didn't take much to have you imagine yourself in their position. Their life. One of the girls in the photographs even looked like you.

"Oh, my God," you thought. "I could be stuck here. I could be living my life a hundred years before I was born. Die a hundred years before I was..."

The next thought came as natural to you as instinct:

_"I've got to find the Doctor."_


	6. The Ceiling

And while you were enjoying the confides of your new luxurious cage I was being pumped for information. And blood. The latter being more literal and physical.

I hate it when that happens.

They no longer suspected me of murdering that boy atop the Eiffel Tower somewhere in time and space but that didn't stop them from filling at least five vials with 2 inches of my blood.

Time Lord blood. Something that could get you a fortune in some parts of the universe. It's very rare.

And their nurses weren't as kind as they are around here. One of them was actively displeasant. I think she had a moustache. That definitely put me off moustaches.

**Oh, thank God.**

They had me strapped down and for the next three hours I was forced to look up at a ceiling.

_A ceiling!_

I've seen supernovas collide and galaxies merge, I've seen new species develop from scratch, comets turn to stardust and I've seen people, oh so many gorgeous, marvellous people, and then I was punished to look up at a ceiling for what felt like an eternity.

That's _not _how you treat a guest.

I was helpless to say the least, strapped to a table and left for hours trying to twist my neck into some kind of position from which I could see anything but the bland and dreary ceiling.

"Michelangelo," I said. "If there's one thing I hate it's a bland ceiling."

I don't know if he ever put that advice to good use but I'm glad I got that off my chest any way.

**You did not meet Michelangelo.**

You have nó idea.

"Get me out of of here! Someone!" I yelled. I was lying with my head towards the door strapped to a table in some empty storage room somewhere at the heart of the organization's headquarters.

I knew they hadn't gotten to the TARDIS yet. I could feel it. It was a small victory amongst a field of defeat.

I wished I could've seen some scientists or seen anyone at all. Then I saw someone through the glass. I whistled. I recognized the vague silhouette as it grew nearer. It was Bernárd.

And I knew he was probably being tested on as well. Him and the body. The body and him.

_The body!_ I then realized it had to be there somewhere. I could still see it. Examine it. See if there's anything I missed.

"Bernárd! Haha!" I said and I was looking at him upside down. I was glad to see a familiar face. "Am I glad to see you!"

"Doctor, wasn't it?"

"Yes," I said catching my breath. "I'm the Doctor."

"Are you all right? You don't look well."

"No, I'm fine. Two hearts'll make the blood rush in no time at all!" I said as he circled the table. He seemed nervous as he approached me but not about me.

"What about you, Bernárd?" I asked him.

"I'm fine," he spoke defensive. The guards probably told him about me. More of _Simon de Leeuw'_s warnings I supposed.

"They told me not to release you." he said.

"Of course they did!" I said. "It doesn't matter. I'm actually quite comfortable, but if you could just scratch my nose...right there..."

I wiggled my nose to point out where it itched madly. The trick worked. Bernárd moved closer and he scratched the tip of my nose.

"Oh, thanks for that!" I exclaimed. "You're amazing!"

I knew he had come in here for a reason. I could see a question forming in his head. Something that had been troubling him since he'd seen his own body but there was no-one he could ask. Then he found me.

"Why are you here, Bernárd?" I finally asked him when I found proper eyecontact. "Really?"

"No-one's telling me anything," he said. "They've been probing, testing and scanning me for hours now, and no-one's telling me what is going on. But if that's me on the table there that means I'm going to die. Is that right, Doctor? Am I going to die?"

There seemed to be no way around it. He needed the truth.

"Yes."

"Not someday, not in the far future, not in my sleep when I'm old..." he added keenly. "Am I going to die soon? Am I going to die today?"

"Everything seems to point that way."

The boy struggled to fight off the tears. I felt sorry for him. The news of your impending death is never an easy thing to hear.

"Bernárd..." I said. "Listen..."

He covered his face with his hands and turned away. Yet he had to listen.

"Time can be rewritten. It doesn't have to be this way!"

"How do you know that?"

I didn't. It's the body that sparked this chain of events. Without that body you and I would've simply enjoyed the scenery atop the Eiffel Tower, looked out into the distance with a drink in both hands and witnessed the Exposition at the turn of the century.

It would've been a lot duller, but still it would've been a lot more comfortable.

"I can save your life, Bernárd...I can try..." I said to the boy. "But you'll have to get me out of these restraints. I can help you..."

"The People will have me executed!" Bernárd protested.

Executed? He was going to die anyway!

"They'll have me -"

The doors opened and the nurse returned, and only when she was done did I know that she was releasing me back into the care of the soldiers.

I watched Bernárd struggle to remain silent underneath the watchful eyes of my keepers and I tried to tell him he didn't have to help me, but then he rushed towards me and whispered something in my ear:

"Your friend...she's with Mr Eiffel. He's keeping her safe."

The guards moved him away but I had heard enough.

"Come on then! I haven't got all day!" I told the nurse.

After another ten minutes alone in my cell I was reunited with the general at the heart of the organization's headquarters which took me at least another ten minutes to reach by foot. It was another similar building with massive metal gates and shiny floors with a guard at every door.

One day this place would be a museum.

The two soldiers who escorted me from place to place were silent chaps. Gerárd and Albert they were called. They told me to observe but not to speak.

Now there was a promise I couldn't keep.

I found the general in the last room they took me to, standing behind a large mahogany table, larger than a snooker table, at the centre of the room.

I watched him loom over a model of the city Paris, an exact replica, which stood on top of that table, wired to several large machines at either side of the room.

"I take it this is the war room," I said but from the room came no response.

"We've lost squad six and seven," the general's main translator of data explained to him. The man was very direct and to the point. Razor sharp even. "Last contact was here and here."

He pointed to locations on the model and little lights embedded within the tiny streets started flaring up red. I moved to stand on the tips of my toes to sneak a peek at the model.

"The catacombs," the general whispered under his breath. He was prone to grumbling. Something about the catacombs clearly frightened him.

I was uneasy. It had been several decades since I've stood still this long. Or was it hours? Sometimes it's hard to tell.

Then I realized this wasn't the war room. This was the data room. All data, from every field agent's report to every tidbit of information that came through from wireless radio was intercepted and interpreted here.

From side doors there came messenger after messenger handing the general another envelope, another piece of paper, yet the general's face never changed or missed a beat with any read sentence.

He seemed as static and tough as the machines that surrounded him and just like the machines, not unaffected by a touch of rust and world-weariness.

"General!" I said and I felt the need to step in and circle the table. "You're losing valuable and precious men I take it. You're under a lot of stress. So if I could just make a suggestion..."

"No," the general spoke but I wasn't finished.

"I'm the greatest weapon in your arsenal. Something's definitely stirring underneath Paris, so I'm telling you...USE ME! Don't stuff me in yet another dingy cell. I can help."

"You don't get it, Doctor," the general said as he peered across the model of his precious city. "You only speak when spoken to. You only act when ordered to. You don't tell me what to do. You are a prisoner of _the People_."

"Right..." I finally understood what Bernárd meant when he said that. It was the name of the organization.

"If you do not conform, your companion will die. Are we clear? _Time Lord_?"

A valet entered carrying a silver tray. There wasn't anything on it, except a tiny model of the Eiffel Tower. Perhaps the first.

A brand new addition to the general's model of the city. I grabbed it from the tray and threw it in the air before catching it. I knew the general didn't like that.

I saw it was a good model. Highly detailed. Very good indeed.

In seconds I threw it over to the general. A tiny gesture I knew would haunt him.

"Perfectly," I said. "So, where do you want me?"

I decided to play along.

He sent me into the corner like a disobedient child but I watched him as he carefully set down the Tower in his model of the city, right atop a clump of red blinking lights.

"Ugly thing, isn't it?" the general spoke to his advisor. I watched him nod.


	7. Going Places

The world seemed to pass us by, not just people like us I mean: I should say time passed by slowest for young Bernárd (for whom every second felt a lifetime after having been confronted by his own mortality) but you hadn't even begun feasting on your early dinner when Eiffel was already reaching for his coat.

You perked up from your bowl of soup. There wasn't anything that went by you. In fact, in this tiny, little home your senses were heightened by anxiety, as if at all times there were guns pointed at your head. And of course there were, albeit not literally or directly.

"You're leaving?" you asked. You refused the old man's sighs as a proper response.

You were terrified of being left alone there. In 1889.

"Let me come with you."

The old man laughed but not at you. It's the curse of old age that memories start to blur reality and in the end there's not a thing that doesn't remind you of something else.

Something older. Something better. Nostalga always seems to remove the rough edges from memories of the past.

You could tell whenever he looked at you he was seeing something else. You tried to grasp his eyecontact fiercely, but he kept looking away.

"Gustave," you spoke determined, before realizing how rude that must've sounded. "Mr Eiffel..."

However the old man's duties had already been plotted out hours beforehand. There were mechanics at work here you couldn't possibly fathom. Orders from the very highest institution and a plan that was being updated every minute and every step of the way.

And the order had been given that you should remain exactly where you were.

"I'm sorry," he said and he checked his pocket watch. He was expected at the World Exhibition in a few moments but he couldn't let poor Bernárd alone at the lab.

"I have to return to the Fair."

Of course, you couldn't let him go that easily.

"The Tower, you mean? Yóur Tower?"

The way you'd said it wasn't lost on him and it's not like he doesn't have a sense of humour.

"Yes," he said. "My Tower."

He chuckled as he said it. A chuckle of a pitiful man. Then you remembered what I told you about the protests and about the negativity and dislike towards this triumph of engineering.

Such campaign never goes unnoticed; particularly towards the man who made it. The man with the vision.

"It's a mistake," he said. "The critics are right. It shall be pulled down at the end of the Fair and rightly so."

"No," you spoke. You've stolen that from me. "You heard me."

He wasn't the first to be astonished by the magical Amy Pond and he wasn't going to be the last.

67-year old Gustave Eiffel was one step away from being poked in the gut by an angry ginger.

**Oi!**

"Look at you! Look at what they've done to you! They made you doubt yourself. Don't. Let others doubt you. You're brilliant."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Yes you are! I love the Eiffel Tower! It's my favourite!"

"Favourite of what?" he asked and the question stumped you briefly. If only I'd been there to watch you stammer.

"Of buildings. Towers, obviously! It's great!"

"You really think so?"

"Of course it is! The people of this time are just idiots! They don't appreciate art! But I do!"

"Art?"

"Whatever!"

"Who are you?"

You plucked at his bowtie with a raised eyebrow and settled for an inspired twinkle in your eye.

"I'm coming with you."

No man can resist a flutter of your eyelashes.

"Take me to the Tower," you said. "That's where it started. It has to be connected and I'm betting the Doctor thinks the same."

"How can you be so sure?"

"I just am."

"That's not good enough," he said.

Of course, Alexandre Gustave Eiffel wasn't just a man, he was a genius.

"You will stay here," he told you. "I'll be back as soon as possible. I'll relay your opinion to the general's staff. Maybe get a word in to that Doctor of yours and see what he thinks."

You had every right to feel betrayed but you weren't sure if you actually had been betrayed or whether you had just failed.

"And that's it?" you asked. "You're just going to keep me here?"

Gustave smiled one of those smiles only grandfathers have. "If I must."

Then came the waterworks.

"This isn't my time!" you spoke, eyes all filling up with angry tears. "I don't belong here and you know it!"

"I don't know where you belong, miss Pond," Gustave said. "But you're here now and that's all we know for certain."

"Yeah? Well, you know what else is for certain? The deaths of everyone you know if you don't let me out of here."

"Is that a threat, miss Pond?"

"A warning," you said and you only blinked once. Then an awkward silence.

"Thank you."

He grabbed his top hat and left. He hated himself for walking out on you like that but you and time had left him no other option.

Somehow, it's always you and time.

"That's just great," you muttered to yourself, scratching your itching clothing and that was before you noticed the soldier standing at attention behind you watching your every move.

Obviously, if it wasn't for him you'd have skipped from that place within a flutter of your eyelids.

"Can I make you a coffee?" you asked him. Now that couldn't possibly end well.

Speaking of things that don't end well there was another unfinished story we were all blissfully unaware of. Something dark that was going on right beneath our feet in the tunnels underneath Paris.

Captain Jack and his former jailors were being dragged through mud and mortared stone into pitch black jagged rock and unstable tunnels without end.

With no sun or hope down there there was only the light of the flaming torches that lit their way and the brutal grip of the men that had tied their hands together. Of course, Jack's already were cuffed together and that would eventually save his life.

Then the texture of the mines changed and they were thrown in front of something large, something they could barely make out in the light of the torches they couldn't keep still. The shadows were dancing. Darkness came and went and came again.

Their captors quarreled over the next part of their route. They weren't exactly the brightest.

"Put on the goggles!" one of them yelled at the other.

With a kick to their shins they were told to stand up and finally hold their own weight. Claire and Michelle didn't know why the men were giggling to themselves as if they were laughing at some joke they weren't in on. They soon found out though.

"No!" Claire gasped when they reached a stone arc, beyond which the darkness was not just darkness anymore. The air was laden with terror. With stolen breaths and missed heartbeats.

Those that went down these passages always left something of themselves behind.

There was an inscription on the stone portal. Jack could barely read it. It was French.

_"Arrête, c'est ici l'empire de la Mort."_

"My French isn't what it used to be," Jack said and Claire therefore translated while the men around her waited in all smugness. They practically pushed her to read it aloud.

"Stop," she spoke with a trembling voice, and only when the light of the torches hit her face did Jack see that her glasses had fallen from her face. She wasn't reading. She was reciting from memory.

She repeated when her voice failed her.

"Stop, this is the Empire of Death."

Claire knew what they would find as they nudged her through the entrance of the ossuary and soon after they entered they saw it.

Entire halls and caverns of walls of carefully arranged bones, of thousand if not millions of skulls placed side by side with hollow eyes.

Jack tried not to think of them as people. It was as if they were all staring at him. Judging him.

But this was only the beginning.


	8. Superstition of Soil

Humans aren't the only species that tend to bury their dead in the soil of their planet. The superstition of dirt is something very common throughout the universe because people stupidly think that because they can't see the dead they somehow cease to exist.

The remains of the living are still there, buried beside the living, all to keep the mourning process alive. To keep the memories alive. To keep the dead alive, barely.

And sometimes, with a surplus of psychic energy and a catalyst, the dead have been known to come alive, through sheer will, hanging by a thread of life.

As the old envy the young, the dead always envy the living...

**So, those skulls are going to come alive then? Is that it? **

No! Did you think this story was going to be about zombies? You underestimate me, Amy Pond. Surely, I'm not that predictable.

No, zombies were never my cup of tea. They're no good for conversation...Vampires on the other hand...

I'm sorry, Amy. You didn't want a depressing tale but this story is definitely taking a turn for the worse, but that's the rule of storytelling, isn't it? Create obstacles for the hero to overcome, dragons for the knight to slay...

Life can't always be fun and games. It wouldn't be life without death.

Joy without sadness. A sky without soil isn't sky..._it's the universe..._and there were some down there living among the dead who hadn't seen it in years.

Since the remains of the dead had been exhumed and transferred into the underground caverns people had been drawn toward them, because let's face it: everyone loves a good mystery, especially one as scary as this one.

These pirates weren't the first to be lured into the dark to hide and nor were they the last, but I have to say that for people known to be sporting a skull and crossbones flag, or a Jolly Roger, they couldn't have picked a more better spot.

"Respect the dead!" the leader of the illiterate band grumbled through a teethless mouth.

They had walked far into the depths of the unstable mines, through tunnels they could've sworn were inches away from cracking and crashing into a pile of debris and bone. Lots and lots of bones. At times they were even standing on them. Piles and piles of it.

Then they finally found some encampment in the dark, some form of sanity within the looming threat of the skulls.

Again, superstition! When ever has a skull hurt a man? They're just empty. Except that's even scarier. 'I shall show you fear in a handful of dust.' T.S. Eliot wrote that, or was it Madison Cawein? I always get those two mixed up.

Then again, skulls can have very nasty teeth...

"Why is this one in chains?" their toothless leader asked, rather grouchy. Jack thought it was safe to assume their day wasn't going well. So he took the bait and tried his strategy.

Everyone must have some kind of hope down there. So he used it to his advantage.

"I'm a prisoner," Jack spoke in between breaths. "You saved my life. They were going to execute me down here."

Of course, "down here" doesn't mean a thing to those that have never been "up". For them, it's just "here". Everything's relative.

He thought he could find some way to be recruited by these pirates, if they were looking for help.

He tried to deduce more about their current situation but in the dark there was little to see. His ears heard only grunts and curses in the dark and lots of lifting. They were preparing for something.

Something that sounded a lot like war.

The warm light of their torches barely registered on their tanned faces. Somehow they had retained their muscled shape but there was barely any flesh left on their bodies besides their bony hands, hardened with thick callus.

Yet their seemed to be something graceful in their motions. They moved through the dark past one another without a hitch, without a single word of communication, as if they were all just cogs in a well-oiled machine or a well-rehearsed play.

The leader pointed at the two girls and Jack couldn't help but be disgusted by his perverted smile as if he could read the thoughts that accompanied it. So many years in the dark...

Jack was cautious not to play too eager. Nobody likes a traitor.

"You're not French," the leader spoke.

"You're right," Jack spoke. "I'm not. I used to be stationed in the United Kingdom..."

"Kingdom?" he asked. Like him, Jack guessed, they weren't from around here either.

"Never mind."

Mentioning Torchwood, Jack realized, wasn't going to help either. He was going to have to think outside the box for this one.

The toothless leader crouched down at the warm fire at his feet and Jack noticed how the fire was fueled by something non-terrestrial, that means 'not from this world'.

**I know what it means.**

"We haven't got time!" the man with gaps in his teeth cried out and he hissed orders at his people in his native tongue.

They had been killing tourists and mine inspectors for weeks now, and anyone else who dared to venture below the skin of the city, but now there were government agents lurking in the corridors dumping bodies beneath bodies...

Jack recognised the language, even though he could not speak it. It was Dokka, the language of the Rygellian pioneers.

He had assumed they were human. Their clothing revealed nothing about their otherwordly nature, nor their human appearance. The Rygellian pioneers were descendants from the Asian ambassadors who settled on Aura Prime. Hundreds of years into the future.

What were they doing down here? And in this time, even?

"_Sha-dokka mare ton ta peh! Laka_?" Jack said and it worked. He immediately caught the leader's attention.

"_Tal dokka maru ma'ch peh tata? Jho?_" the leader asked in return with a tilt of his head.

"Sorry, that's the only Dokka I remember. Although I do know a couple of swear words in Chidoth."

"_Chidoth_. You speak the language of the snake charmers?"

"Long story. I met this girl. You know how it goes," Jack grinned.

He eyed his new keepers carefully, while his old keepers lay on the floor behind him, crying silently while their mouths were being gagged.

The guys that had dragged them into this place seemed to have been the only truly big people of the crew. The rest were smaller in stature but Jack knew they probably far more dangerous.

In the dancing light he could see teeth dangling on chains from their neck, and in the back he could hear a sharpening of knives.

Jack waited for the toothless leader's judgment.

"Perhaps we have a use for you yet, chon-pau," he said, his gums smacking against rotting black teeth.

"'Chon-pau', doesn't that mean 'stranger'?" Jack asked as his cuffs were removed.

"No," the toothless man said with a smile. "It means 'dead man'."

Jack grinned reluctantly as he started massassing his sore wrists, but just before he could say another word there was another order and two guns were drawn in the dark. Jack caught a glimmer of light reflecting into his eyes as he turned. Then there were two bangs that echoed through the tunnel and he screamed.

"No!"

When he looked again, Claire and Michelle were lying next to each other in the mud, each one blemished with a tiny dot on their forehead that grew larger and larger in the light of the fire.

**Dead.**

I'm afraid so.

"Don't think you are free yet, chon-pau." the toothless man then turned to Jack. "The boss will decide your star."

Jack made fists of his hands were they could not see it. You can't blame him for wanting to avenge their deaths, even though they were his captors. They were their prisoners and they killed them.

"Star... that means fate, right?" Jack relented with grinding teeth and his new keeper smiled.

Jack held in a primal scream, and it hurt his gut.

"You're learning."


	9. The Clue

The Rygellian pirates had lain dormant underneath the city, much like an inactive virus waiting for the right moment to strike and since the dead tell no tales we were -ironically- left in the dark.

Just think of Paris as one giant abstract human body and Gustave's organization as the white blood cells, the city's immune system, dedicated to keeping it safe from harm. Safe from foreign elements, such as myself.

I don't blame them for doing their jobs but I do blame them for not doing it right. How did these people slip past them unnoticed?

These were questions. Questions that needed to be answered and if I had known I would have. However, this was one piece of the puzzle that hadn't caught my attention yet.

But it caught yours, Amy.

Locked inside a drawer in Gustave's study was a file, a top secret file, that pointed the way towards the crux of this entire tale. Something that had been obvious from the entire beginning.

You hurt yourself as you bumped into the oak desk it was locked inside, scared by the banging on the doors.

"Open this door!"

You made an honest soldier quite mad that afternoon, Amy, and of course who wouldn't be when you throw a cup of boiling hot coffee into their face?

Gustave had locked the door behind him so you had no other choice to run upstairs and lock yourself inside his study. Oh, how I envied you! Standing inside Mr Eiffel's study.

Just imagine the building plans and engineering sketches framed upon the walls, the portrait of himself in the corner of the study, the stamp of his genius on every book. Of course, you didn't have to. You were there.

You knocked over an umbrella stand and a pot of ink that had been standing atop his desk awaiting its master. It spilled all over important documents! You silly girl!

You saved a book from the ink onslaught and within a blink of an eye you recognised the name 'Bernárd' underneath the words 'Property Of'. It was a Latin study book.

You were so close.

They were banging on the other end of the door and you could picture their faces. Usually it was your cross aunt shouting at the other end that dinner was ready or that your ugly boyfriend Rory was at the door again...

**Who?**

Right. Of course...No-one. He's no-one. I was saying...

You knew who it were on the other side of that door. A poor soldier drenched in hot coffee and a nervous manservant fiddling with a master's key of the house in his hands.

A single chair propped up against the doorknob wasn't going to stop them getting in.

"I'm a hostage! You can't shoot me!" You were getting quite desperate.

You looked for ways out of the study. A giant window. From there you could see into the garden but if you jumped there was a risk of falling straight down upon the sharp, black fence.

And trust me, you didn't want to go to a French hospital in 1889. Back then primitive medical minds thought the best way to revive a drowning man is to blow smoke up their bottom.

Honestly, sometimes I really can't believe the things the human race believed.

**Were the Time Lords never like this in their own past?**

Well...

From certain points of view there never was a past for the Time Lords.

However, Gallifreyan culture was born from a paradox. A man from the future established basic education at the dawn of our civilization and we never looked back since. But there's always a price for knowledge unearned.

It's a lesson many refused to learn: that there's no substitute for actual field work. Hence, there's me!

But sometimes it does help to write things down. Memories don't last forever. Some things get lost in time, forgotten, erased even...

Remember that, Amy. Remember...

And then there was a BANG.

A gunshot shattered the lock and missed you by a breath, but it hit the desk and shattered another lock.

They were cursing in French on the other side of the door, fighting amongst themselves for shooting at the door and you ducked for cover behind the desk.

You were practically sitting in it. If you hadn't been careful you would've gotten a wood splinter stuck in your hand or even a paper cut.

Then you found it. The file had been scattered across the floor at your feet but you don't need to read an entire file when you've got a single picture that can tell a thousand words.

Of course, without the words the picture doesn't make any sense. It could've been anything.

Photography in the 19th century had only just begun to discover its potential. All you were holding there was a grainy, black and white timelapse photo of a particularly strange event.

You could make out the shape of a beach in the picture but the rest was an all-too familiar mystery.

Then you picked up the other pages and started reading. A story begun to unfold and things soon started to make sense.

I love that moment, that Eureka moment, don't you?

"Oh, the Doctor's going to love this..." you said and you were right.

The soldier and the butler started fighting amongst themselves and the soldier's rifle went off in the struggle and it pierced the door and shattered the window.

Quickly you saw an opportunity had presented itself and by the time they had fought their way into the master's study you were halfway down the garden.

Naturally, this wasn't the first time you'd escaped a second floor window.

**You have nó idea.**

"Stop her!"

You were quite proud of yourself even though half of it was luck. Most of it.

You knew to quickly blend into the crowds where your pursuers could not find you and your clothing suddenly stopped bothering you.

Eiffel's Tower towered over the rest of the city -as towers quite often do- and it became your reference point of the city, your focal point of travel, knowing that I would join you there very soon.

Then a German Panzer Tank nearly knocked you off your feet. That wasn't supposed to be there.


	10. Mind Games

I was aching to solve this mystery; aching to step up and shine a light on everything that could be happening, find the problem, find the solution and save the day. But if I did, how would they ever learn?

The general was belching orders at six random telegraphists tapping away at their devices while receiving and sending messages into the field. The man was pacing back and forth past their backs like a headmaster overseeing a strenuous exam.

"More manifestations, sir," one of the telegraphists spoke. He was lucky he was wearing a headset. The general's shouting wasn't exactly easy on sensitive ears.

I saw the stress was slowly getting to him. The telegraphist's frantic typing only added to the feeling of panic in the room. I watched it from the other end of the room, waiting by the window with arms folded behind my back doing exactly what I was told.

He knew I was watching. Him and the little red lights which flared up within the general's model city exactly to the rhythm of his flaring nostrils. Something was definitely getting out of hand.

"Need any help with that?" I asked. I was only being polite.

His frustration started to emit from him like gas and his forehead glistened with sweat, but he never lost his cool! You have to grant him that.

Every time he sent a messenger away it seemed another entered, burdening the general with more and more problems but he refused to give up some of that weight. He chose to carry it alone.

Another messenger entered and he recited the paper he brought in as he walked in, no longer respecting the rules of confidentiality. The city was in crisis.

"The police are receiving more and more reports of ghostly apparitions."

"Apparitions?" I asked when curiosity bested me, but I was again ignored. Yet the general let me watch and listen and he let me wait. Why?

I wondered if he was really going to harm Amy as he threatened. Was he the sort of man to hurt an unarmed and helpless girl? Could I risk it?

There I was, weighing the life of one girl against the world. What would you have chosen, Amy?

I think you would've chosen the girl. You would've jumped in front of a tank to save a life and in fact you did.

More of them drove through the streets in what seemed like a victory parade.

"They're not real." you said while clutching the life you've just saved long after their gratitude had waned. "They can't be."

The invasion of Paris by the Nazi's had come 40 years ahead of its time. Except it hadn't.

The tanks faded into thin air before they'd even fully materialized. For a split second two timelines that never before met crossed over and 1889 and 1940 merged, but it wasn't alone.

Men with black masks roamed the streets of Paris carrying the victims of the Black Death atop crooked wheelbarrows. Music blasted into the street from a stereo 80 years into the future while Romans crushed rebels and confused Neanderthals watched Napoleon crown himself Emperor a first and second time.

Through the crowds of superstitious screaming you saw a man fiddling with the controls of his lightwave scanner. It hung around his neck looking like a miniature jukebox or an Etch-A-Sketch. You remember those, don't you?

In all the panic he never saw you coming. You took a sweet guess to where he hid his gun and dug your hand there before he could get his hands off the scanner.

He protested in vain because by then there was a pistol and a smug smile pointed at him.

"Right," you said. "You're coming with me."

The needle on the device was jumping into the dangerous zone. Time and space were merging and in a sense the dead did quite in fact come back to roam the Earth.

And they were wasting two excellent experts by not using them! One's imprisoned underneath the city, captured by an unseen enemy and another...

Another's holding back. I had to step in, before atrophy would kick in.

"General!" I said. "There's no more time! You need to use me or lose the city!"

"It's time-travellers like you who got us into this mess in the first place!" he grumbled.

"Like me?"

"Interfering with our time. Violating our space! For all I know it could've been you who scratched that word above that boy's body!"

"You need to start trusting me," I said. We were both hovering over the model of the city staring each other down and I always win stare contests if I'm not distracted. I was getting quite cross now.

"This isn't one of your games, Doctor. This is my city. I will not see it destroyed."

"I save cities! Haven't you heard!" I paced in semi-circles around the room with a single finger at the ready to stick into the general's face. I didn't know why.

Then I did. My subconscious had picked up on it. I didn't. Then it all snapped back into place.

"Hang on, what was that? Words...something about words...You said something. What was it?"

I snapped my fingers. I found it.

"_Word._ Not Words," I said peering at the general. "You said 'word'. "No One" is two words. Say it again. What did you say? You said that for all you knew it could've been me that scratched that word above that boy's body. Word, not words. Singular, not plural. What did it say? General, TELL ME!"

"You know what it said, Doctor," he spoke. "Don't play games!"

"Nobody."

"What?" I asked. A messenger had said something. He'd approached the table with another letter and swallowed when I asked him to repeat what had slipped from his lips. It was important.

"Nobody, sir," the messenger spoke. "The message above the body said Nobody."

Nobody. No body. What irony. What mistake!

"How could I've not seen this?" I said slapping my forehead. More circles paced across the shiny floor. Reflections. I crouched down to look at my reflection on the waxed floor. I saw a second me pulling faces at me. A double me.

"Time is splintering," I concluded. "There are cracks in time and space all around us because of some future event, but something else is shattering it. Some other future temporal causality is exacerbating the cracks on a microscopic level. Parts of time and space that never should have touched are colliding, sliding past each other, like plate tectonics, like earthquakes. Earthquakes in Paris. Tiny...tiny cracks..."

"But it hasn't happened yet," the messenger spoke.

"But it _is _happening_. _It _will _happen!" I added and I had to check my watch. "In approximately five hours..."

I turned to the general and realized I was smiling so I stopped.

"Seven hours till the end of the world, gentlemen!" I proclaimed. "But don't worry! I've had worse!"


	11. Time And Space

The present is the most elusive concept in existence. Just look at that clock. You see it?

**Where?**

The Doctor shoved aside the curtains for a bit and pointed at a grandfather clock across the hall of the hospital.

There was that mysterious smile on his face he always used to get when he showed her something. It was like he was testing her or reading her reaction.

She remembered what he once told her: that through her eyes he sees everything anew again. Teaching others gave his life meaning. He found a way to let his memories have a new purpose instead of slowly letting them fade away.

Amy glanced at the wooden object with the white, round clockface. It was twenty minutes past nine in the evening.

"Look at the second hand," the Doctor said, buzzing with the excitement of exploration and discovery. "Look at it tick. The present is always one second apart from the past and future. It's a fleeting moment in time. Blink and you'll miss it and it will never come again. Even I, a humble time traveller, can never experience the same moment the same way ever again. It's lost in time."

The second hand ticked away, every flick of the hand a breath away from eternity and oblivion, and the way it never stopped started to get on her nerves. Amy had to look away.

"The present is always travelling and we're travelling with it," the Doctor said. His voice soothed her and made the darkness go away.

The guns of the battlefield in the distance dulled as the night grew darker. The soldiers prepared for the night as well as their shifts were relieved and manned by fresh recruits, but they always kept a cautious eye at the night sky. You never knew when the enemy would try to strike

The Doctor pulled a hankerchief from the inside pocket of his tweed jacket and held it in front of her.

"You're crying," he said and there was something in his eyes that seemed to read her face again but she wondered whether she was just being paranoid.

"It's my leg," she said. "It hurts. _Really_ hurts."

"Good!" the Doctor spoke glad and he tapped her leg. Amy flinched. "That means it's working."

Seeing the hankerchief unused in Amy's hand, the Doctor slipped it past her grip and put it back in his pocket.

"So the Earth wasn't destroyed then," she said.

"What?" the Doctor's mind had wandered for a moment. Past the curtains bloodied soldiers were being wheeled into the corridors. Most of them would never truly recover and would never truly be compensated for their losses.

Would they have been better off believing their friends, lost in combat, never existed?

No, that was silly. In wars there would always be someone to take their place.

"Yes. Right..." the Doctor said, shaking his head and remembering where he'd left off with the story.

Amy clutched her leg and wished for the recovery process to complete soon. She wanted her leg back.

"From a non-linear, non-subjective view point time makes a lot less sense come to think of it but it's much more fun that way, don't you think?" he said and his smile reappeared within an instant.

**Non-what?**

Remember that second hand, Amy. Remember it well.

We're all travelling. The Earth is spinning on its axis, spinning in orbit around the sun, spinning through time and space, so when we talk about time and space never forget that time always has a different place.

Past and future are always in motion, travelling much quicker than you could possibly imagine, so there's no such thing as time AND space.

There's just time.

And space. And there's a space for every time. As in real estate, it's _location, location, location_.

Yet everything seemed to converge around the same time and the same space...on Earth. Why?

Maybe it was psychic energy binding the events together like ghosts are linked to old houses, memories, old and current, linking back to their origin, as if they wanted to return home, or as if they wanted to be buried there.

The dead joined the living, while the generations that were yet to come seemed intent, like all new generations do, on conquering the ones that came before them. Only retroactively.

As the cracks widened the links grew stronger. With every passing moment the apparitions grew stronger, more physical, until finally...

**Finally, what?**

That's what they asked me. _The People_ wanted transparancy.

For hours I was trying to get their attention, and now I had it, I wanted them off my back.

They had me in cuffs again and put me under constant surveillance with a guard on each side, like a double shadow. In the gritty courtyard of their headquarters they dangled my sonic screwdriver in front of my face like a dog's biscuit.

I nearly did bite.

"What happens when the seven hours are up, Doctor?" they asked me.

They weren't ready. Then again, who's ever ready to hear the details of your homeworld's future destruction? I know I wasn't.

"I don't know," I lied. "Could be anything."

"Take a guess." the woman said.

She told me her name was Marie. It was a very short introduction but I understood she was the kind of huntress that liked to play with her food. I couldn't help but notice a motif of flowers in the way she dressed, from the flowers on her hat to the pattern woven into her army green dress.

But the black buttons, they didn't fit. They had been polished to the point of obsession, which told me a lot about her.

"We, _the People_, reward loyalty and punish disobedience, Doctor," she said.

"Loyalty?" I said and I rattled the metal that chained my hands to my feet. "Is that what you call this?"

"Those are precautions, Doctor. We can't have you run off. You are the organization's most prized possession."

"Yeah, yeah, I get that. Last of the Time Lords and everything. I'm flattered, honestly. Now...what's that?"

I nodded towards a plume of smoke that rose up from within the city in the distance.

Marie waited to make sure I saw her handing my sonic screwdriver over to one of her underlings before turning around to look at the black smoke.

I read her lips as she beckoned the same underling again.

"Where is that?" she asked. I didn't think she could grow paler than she already was, especially in this sunlight.

I realized there was chaos. Primitive humans are frightened by what they don't understand and the past is on the top of that list. But this wasn't just an ordinary fire.

I remembered the model city in the data room, the flashing lights, the pins and flags stuck into various locations on the map. Time and space.

I had a time but not a space. And this could be it.

"Seven hours," I said. "Until the end of the world."

There was much they weren't telling me. There was so much distrust within this organization.

It would be their downfall and we were inching toward it one clue at a time.

I'd deduced the location of their headquarters by examining my surroundings out the window. The model city had a tiny red flag stuck just on top of our position and there were three other flags.

I recognised a factory, a warehouse and the building where we'd been imprisoned and where they'd taken my blood samples.

The fire couldn't have been far from where the warehouse was located, judging the distance and density of the smoke.

"Something's causing all this," I told Marie and everyone who would listen. "Now. I've got a word, a victim, a fugitive and a crack in time and that fire over there which are all parts of the same sum, like pieces of the same puzzle. Now I don't work well in teams. So just tell me. What happened to squad six and seven?"

"What?"

"In the dataroom I heard it said that squad six and seven had been lost. What happened to them?"

Sometimes a look is all I need but you know what's better? Actual words.

"Tell me!" I yelled. Seven hours. At this rate I can't even cook a decent pastry let alone save the world. "I need...information! Input output! Data, I need data or the world as you know it will cease to exist!"

"Bold words..."

"But true!" I bellowed. "Look around you, Marie. This isn't a drill."

The only way you can learn is to open up and let yourself be taught.

"Squad six and seven were assigned to follow the time traveller's signal," Marie said.

"And?"

The air was growing cold. What time was it? What time would the world end?

"They failed to report back in."

The message was sound but the data spoke for itself. They had been killed.

There was more at play there than met the eye, I finally realized.

"Two brains are better than one, Doctor. Now you tell me. What will happen after those seven hours are up?"

"You don't want to know."

Should I have told her? Should I have told her about the Nazi invasion, the economic crisis, the sinking of the Titanic, the war of the trenches...

Sometimes they're better off not knowing the future...

**Doctor, tell me.**

When every moment in the history of planet Earth, every flick of the second hand, every single one of them, happen at the same time, at the same place, in the same breath...

Time and space would literally clog, reality would atrophy and freeze, knot and clump into one massive ball of... stuff.

The Earth, its billions of years of past, present and future, would become a cancer of reality and it would spread to infect everything in existence before finally everything would desintegrate.

No two objects can occupy the same space at the same time. Not like this. Now imagine that as billions upon billions of objects in space/time cluttered together.

Maybe that's how it all started. The universe started compressed together in a single point. Maybe the end is only the beginning and out of all this a new universe would emerge, brand new, and time would start again.

Maybe somewhere, somewhen, the universe has already ended before and we just didn't know it. And maybe we were doomed to repeat it.

**But that didn't really happen, Doctor, did it? I mean, we're here, in the future. The universe didn't end, Doctor. Did it?**


	12. The Thief

The Doctor leaned closer towards Amy.

"It's just a story, Amy," he whispered. His smile implied "gotcha" but he wasn't going to call her on it here. Not in her condition. That wouldn't have been exactly fair.

"But then again, we're all stories in the end. Stories unwritten, unfinished, uncredited, untitled..."

He started fidgeting with his cufflinks.

"All stories have endings," Amy said.

The Doctor's cheek curled into a half smile and his voice croaked. "Yes, they do."

"But...endings can also be beginnings," he added.

Amy was puzzled. "Of what?"

The Doctor paused for thought.

"If I could answer that question, I wouldn't be here," the Doctor said. "It's questions, Amy. Sometimes they can get me too excited. I can lose sight of what's right in front of me."

He then apologized for slapping Amy's leg. Again.

"Get on with your story, Doctor."

You're hooked then.

"No, it just distracts me from the pain. When this is over, Doctor..."

Yeah, we'll have ice-cream and jammie dodgers in a galaxy far far away. Somewhere safe. I promise.

But for now we're still in turn of the century Paris, driving down crooked lanes in a horse-drawn carriage while in pursuit of a plume of smoke in the distance. Electric motor cars sped past us at double speed.

With the very first motor cars came the very first anti-social drivers.

Then my attention was drawn away. We passed the Père Lachaise Cemetery and I couldn't help but look with respect. A lot of old friends of mine would be buried there.

I suddenly got quite agitated. Nothing like me, but I'm known to be quite grumpy.

"Come on!" I told the driver. "Time waits for no man!"

"Although it did once, just for me," I added to Marie. She thought she'd figured me out by now. It took me a while to figure out how I could use that to my advantage.

With quick beats and lots of ruthless lashes against the horses's flesh we soon arrived into the shadow of the warehouse where a tree had been set ablaze. I jumped from the carriage, immediately suspicious.

"You were wrong, Doctor," Marie said, following in my wake. "There's nothing here. It's just a fire."

Firemen were cordoning off the area while I scanned the perimeter by turning on the spot.

"Doctor?" Marie asked. As I was suspicious of the situation she couldn't help but be suspicious of me. I wondered whether she'd read my file and so I asked her.

"Did you read my file?"

"Pardon?"

Water and fire clashed behind me, turning a once beautiful tree into a skeleton of ash.

"Did you read my file?" I said. "I just want to know if you trust me."

I had such high hopes for Marie, one way or another, but she wasn't exactly displaying her best skills so far. I had to plan ahead.

She had been with me every step of the way so far. My guide throughout the city, my keeper, my babysitter... At least the general finally listened to some of my suggestions.

Unleashing me was the best thing he could've done.

"What does your file have to do with it?" she asked.

I tutted. "If you'd read the file you would've known." I said.

Marie made up her mind. Her kind face proved to be her greatest asset.

"No," she said. "I don't trust you."

"Of course you don't. A rookie mistake."

Did I mention how much I loved introductions? But if there's anything I love more than introductions, than it's a good monologue!

"There's a reason why this tree's on fire, Marie, and it isn't coincidence, nor is it the hand of God. Notice how there's not a single other thing caught in the blaze. Just one tree. Burning. Just one. Not a city, not a forest..."

"It's a distraction," Marie said. "But for what?"

"Is there anything around here worth stealing, Marie? Anything at all?"

I waited for her to get her epiphany. It's usually worth it to see the light of intelligence flicker in someone's eyes. Like they won the lottery.

She finally looked over my shoulder like I had planned. My position in the streets was vital and so was the big building down the street. A flag sticking in a model city and a burning bush told me there was something worth stealing in that warehouse.

It was a robust building. Every third window had been bricked up and all the others were barred and shut, while the roof had become a gathering ground for pigeons.

I knew that by the time we would find it it'd be gone. Another clue whisked away just when I would get my hands on it. And with only six and a half hours left.

Then it had been my turn to follow in Marie's wake as she flashed her papers at the soldiers guarding the front gates. Our entourage followed suit.

The overwhelmed caretaker, charged with safeguarding the object, was in a state of panic when we arrived and it only affirmed my deductions. Someone had been here.

The thieves created a local disturbance with their simple distraction and then put their plan into motion. It had been perhaps a half hour since the thieves had been here and it had been like they had pulled the rug from under the feet of at least ten guards.

In this case the rug was made of a 2 feet of solid cement.

"Inform the general at once," Marie told the cowardice caretaker when she spotted the giant hole in the ground where a floor used to be.

"The Romans used to dig tunnels underneath their enemy's wall defences and then let it collapse," I said. "And the walls would come crumbling down."

"They used dynamite," Marie concluded. (We weren't talking about Romans anymore. Is no-one interested in history anymore?) My sense of smell had a theory of its own.

"They're in the mines, Doctor. Squad six and seven were last reported entering those very mines."

I finally realized the threat to this world had been hiding underneath us all this time.

"The tunnels are extensive. They go on for many kilometres. We'll never catch them."

"No." I said. We didn't need to. Not yet, anyway. There were questions that needed to be answered first.

I found the hands of experts in the dirt and a keen eye in the use of the unstable foundations of the city. This had been a carefully planned attack, purpose driven...They could've destroyed the building entirely. This was...

"...expertly achieved." I concluded out loud. "Even passionately. They could've blown up the street to get what they wanted, yet they chose silence. No bloodshed. No fuss. They didn't even leave a note."

"Ten people died!" Marie cried but they had been irrelevant.

**Irrelevant?**

To them, not to me!

"They were in the way," I said. "They didn't care about blood. They only came for what they wanted. So what did they want? What was in here?"

I crawled out of the pit with blackened hands and dirt on my face.

"How did you know, Doctor?" Marie asked. "About the theft?"

"I didn't," I said and I waited until she would figure it out.

"You couldn't have known the burning tree was part of the plan," she said. "Doctor! You just said it was so you could enter the warehouse. You tricked me."

"You got me."

The look on her face was worth all the risks.

"I took an educated guess..."

She could barely hold herself from smiling at me, while I was standing there blackened with dirt from the pit. I knew she'd like a bad boy.

"Do you trust me?" I asked again.

Marie smiled. "No."

"You're lying."

"So were you."

A measure of respect was all we needed for now.

"Come along, Doctor," she said and Marie lead the way back to the elevator.

For all I knew they had you locked up inside a refrigerator somewhere screaming for help. I didn't know you had escaped. I didn't know about Jack.

Another piece of the puzzle had just been carried away into the dark stolen by persons unknown for purposes unrevealed.

It would all come together sooner than I thought. Sooner than I could handle.

As I recall, Jack was about to get closer to the truth than any of us, and apparantly you were manhandling a_ People's _employee with a gun in the men's lavatory of a small café, pressing him for information...


	13. Hostages

Jack Harkness wasn't an impatient man, nor did he particularly like being in the presence of the dead, but he was a curious one and he didn't mind the cuffs.

"So, your boss..." he asked. Staring at nothing in particular, he was keen to let his keepers believe he wasn't listening in too much (so he pretended his wounds and fatigue were worse than they were) however he could not keep silent for long. He had a mouth and he intended to use it.

"...is he usually this late?"

Sweat was pouring down the toothless leader's face, so close to the fires that brought light to the dark dwellings below the city, and he grinned, which wasn't what Jack expected.

"Beware your words, stranger," he spoke. "He will make you eat them."

When the man walked away into the deepening shadows Jack dared to speak up. He wasn't going to spend another hour alone in the dark chained to a wall of skulls.

And he wasn't stupid. He knew something was going on above the surface. Claire and Michelle wouldn't have brought him if it hadn't been important; if they hadn't needed him.

Except they were dead now. When they needed Jack the most he failed them.

"Who is this guy anyway?" Jack dared, just before the leader's silhouette faded into the shadows, yet he didn't stop. Instead the man became one with the dark. And he wasn't alone.

There were more keepers and prisoners, hostages and hostage-takers... am I pigeonholing? When people start pointing guns at each other relationships tend to take on different forms.

Take yourself for example. Who would've expected such a sweet Scottish girl to turn into this gun-toting maniac?

**That's a lie and you know it. I don't even like guns. I hate guns!**

Yet you wear a police uniform. Kidding, but extraordinary situations do require extraordinary measures. Shame on you, Amy Pond.

**But I didn't even do anything!**

Cramped inside a locked men's lavatory where barely two people could stand you had your hostage pinned atop the toilet with a foot pressed into his gut and a heel aimed at his private parts, and like a true temptress you dangled the gun in front of him, playfully spinning it around a single finger.

You weren't sure how to handle the dress.

"Start talking," You said and in this case life imitated art because you cocked the pistol.

The nervous employee told you his name was Claude. So you dug underneath your hat and found the stolen file which you pressed into his face.

"What's this?" you demanded to know.

"I don't know," he said.

"That's not an answer I can work with!"

"I was simply scanning the apparations! I don't know what that is!"

The bald bespectacled man was barely more than an overwhelmed office clerk, but you weren't about to underestimate him. He seemed to be telling you the truth, though. So you put the file away. Next question...

"I was cut off from my squad," Claude started saying. "We were tracking the temporal signature all over the city but we lost it as it entered the tunnels, I..."

"You what?"

The question hit a nerve, but then again they always do.

"Ran away?"

Claude nodded. "I survived, they didn't."

You realized you weren't going to crack this case on your own. You needed me.

And I needed you.

Specifically the hidden file underneath your flowery hat. The pirates were after something, something bigger than what had been locked inside that warehouse, and you had the solution all along.

"How can I contact the Doctor?"

"Who?"

"Oh, you're useless!"

They didn't actually had cellphones back then. Think outside the box, Amy!

So (practical as always) you planned a use for him.

"Come on," you unlocked the door much to his surprise.

"What are you going to do?" the man asked. Some of his training started to seep through now the shock of the situation was finally waning.

"I've got a plan," you said. "And you're going to help me with it."

Aiming the gun at his face was your way of a punchline.

If only he'd known there weren't any bullets in that pistol, than he wouldn't have been as frightened, but then of course your interrogation would've been far less effective.

Indeed, things were heating up. Quite literally, in fact.

The energy of a thousand lifetimes was merging into one. Think of the endless moments of the sun's radiation burning at the same time, a normal ray of light intensified a thousand times. Time and space were starting to boil.

I needed to understand what was causing it all. I was convinced all I needed was a word. A single word.

To me it was clear. We had to go back.

"Come on, Marie!" I said slapping the side of the carriage. The carriage felt perfect for a romantic ride. "End of the world! Don't want to be late!"

I rattled my chains. I knew there'd be consequences for my stunt but I figured I'd get some clemency for the fact that I uncovered a heist by examining a burning tree.

"Yes, but you didn't stop it, did you?" Marie said. "They got away."

"They got away with what?" I asked, keenly noting the wrinkles in her smile.

There was a ring on her finger. Who was the lucky man?

"It was a _generator_ we uncovered from a spaceship that crashed off the coast of Narbonne ten years ago," she explained without a hitch. Good girl.

"But it's inactive, Doctor. It's worthless."

"Not to the pirates it isn't. They were keen on retrieving it. Why? If I could've just got my hands on it, examined it...I'm going to need the sonic, where's my sonic?"

"It is safe, Doctor. Exactly where I want it to be."

"Am I exactly where you want me to be?"

"Are you in a padded cell?" Marie said. "Then no."

A sudden sound broke my train of thought. Maybe with good reason. Some thoughts are better left unthought and especially unspoken.

I never thought I would hear that voice again, at least not so soon.

"Portable wireless telegraph!" I exclaimed when I found the source of the sound, strapped to the driver's back. "How very steampunk. I so love this era! Not my favourite era though, with the Boer Wars, the economic panic of '93 and especially Robert Louis Stevenson dying (good man!) and poor poor Franz Joseph!"

"Doctor, can you hear me?" a familiar voice crackled through the fog.

"Am-eeeyyyy!" I exclaimed. "Well done you, well done you!"

I never did find out how you managed to contact me. I can only assume you let your hostage lead you to a secret wireless telegraph or to a similar portable one our driver had here.

"It's the Tower, Doctor!" you said. "It's the Tower!"

"Of course it is!" I said acting as if I knew all along. "Meet me there!"

My excitement would've been a bit less overstated if I had known what was going on beneath me that very moment.

Gustave Eiffel and his young protégé were thrown in the mud at Jack's feet in the dark tunnel, to become hostages like himself.

I failed to realize how the pirates had exactly come to know about the generator's location in that specific warehouse, but in the end I should've known. Gustave had told them, was forced to tell them. Tell _him_.

A man whose eyes seemed to pierce the darkness itself and saw all. A man who fell in deep respect and mourning for the dead that surrounded him. A man who had an air of nobility surrounding him posssessing a stature worthy of a man who could tame time itself and sail it eternally.

There was armour hidden underneath his royal robes but also strength.

He buzzed with temporal radiation. Admiration beamed from all those around him.

He had freed them from the Ethereal Shadow and foiled the hands of the webs that tried to ensnare him. They would follow him everywhere.

Then his eyes fell on Captain Jack Harkness and he uttered a single word.

"You."

He drew his weapon and shot Jack at close range stone dead.


	14. Left Behind

Did I mention he's immortal?

**Immortal? Seriously?**

It's a long story, involving the heart of the TARDIS and a girl...

**Yeah, I bet there was.**

...and a misunderstanding. You can't blame the TARDIS for making mistakes. She's twice as old as I am, poor girl. We've been to places her and me.

**Get a room.**

When Jack died the first time the girl in question used the most powerful source of energy in the universe to bring him back to life. She wanted him to live so the TARDIS made him live forever.

Well, forever...

He lived to die a thousand deaths because one human girl failed to differentiate between life and mortality. Nothing good ever comes without a price, I guess. If you think immortality is a good thing. It's as much a curse as it is a blessing...

In the dark, Jack shot back to life with a gasp with not a clue to what had just happened. There was barely any breath left in the dark tunnels, only ash and bones and a man who similarly shot upright at the sound of his beating heart.

Imagine being left there in total darkness knowing there're skulls all around you and bones making up the very ground you stand on. The empire of the dead isn't a place you enter lightly nor simply leave.

Of course, anyone who's ever been to Beta-Lemon One can testify to that of course. The difference between the dead and the immortal is not having life, _it's living it._

Well, there was no chance of that down there. The pirates had gone and left without a trace and without as much of a breath left behind in the dust. Jack wondered how long he'd been out.

How long had that poor man been left alone here among the dead?

"Hey, hey!" Jack yelled into the dark. "Listen to me! I'm alive!"

He tried to calm the man down aiming his voice for the sobbing in the dark whilst feeling his way across the floor to find the key to his escape.

He'd hoped they had left him lying exactly where he had dropped. If they'd moved him he was never going to find his way out of there, at least not for another hundred years. A hundred years trapped in the sewers, can you imagine that?

He found a human femur as old as the mine itself and as dryer than the dust and he threw it out of his way.

"I'm looking for something!" he said. "If I can find it, I can get us out of here!"

"Who are you?" the man said in the dark. Jack knew names would be futile at this point.

"I'm Captain Jack Harkness," he replied and then he found what he was looking for. He'd touched the end of Michelle's boot, which was attached to a leg and in the pockets of its pants he found his lucky charm.

"Thanks for saving my life girls," he said to the dust. If they hadn't taken it away from him the pirates would've had it now. He wanted to say he was sorry but knew there was no point now.

He'd found his handy time vortex manipulator still wrapped in handsome leather. Except it was all out of juice.

It had been three decades since he last used it. Jack figured that if he had to be lucky any day, it might as well be today.

"Listen! I found it!"

He wrapped it around his wrist and with a tap on a button he managed to turn on the thermo-crystals the pirates had left behind. There was even still a huff of smoke coming off them (still smouldering) which gave the indication they hadn't been gone long.

Among the bones there was a familiar face crawling in the dust. Just another fellow traveller.

"Captain Jack Harkness..." he repeated formally. "What's your name?"

But before Gustave could answer his question Jack shot back upright.

"Whoa! Usually it takes years to soak up that much background radiation but now it seems to have stockpiled overnight! Oh, that's brilliant."

But Jack realized this wasn't a miracle. The pirates had brought something with them when they returned to the tunnels. Something powerful cloaked beneath a dark veil and a mystery, and discovering his "old friend" had been involved with it just confirmed it.

"This can't be right," Jack realized. "This means the floodgates are open. The readings are off the chart!"

"What is that thing?" Gustave asked. "You said it could help us get out of here. Is it some sort of compass or distress beacon? Can we be rescued?"

"Afraid not, gramps. But there's another thing we can do now. Oh, I've been waiting so long for this."

"What?"

"Teleport. Don't go anywhere without it."

Suddenly something moved in the corner of his eyes and Jack almost thought it'd been a body come back to life as he had. Any other day, any other moment, Jack would've drawn his gun, but not that moment. The boy lived.

"Bernárd!" Gustave rushed to help his young protégé. Many years ago a dying girl made him make a promise to look after him. Whether the boy really was his son is unknown, whether the promise was made wasn't.

"Am I dead?" the boy asked. "Is this heaven?"

Jack watched Gustave struggle to find words of comfort. A man's mind is not so easily repaired as his projects were. Somehow he had to find the courage to tell the young boy his suffering wasn't over. His actual death was yet to come.

Gustave realized the boy had come to terms with his fate. All his tears had already been shed. The teenager seemed a hollow shell of the eager and curious young soul he once was. Just hours ago.

"I'll get you out of here, Bernárd," Gustave promised him. "I will."

Jack kept quiet. He didn't dare to extinguish this flicker of hope before it had even had a chance to grow.

Yet the readings didn't lie (only he could) and the ugly truth would have to rear its head sooner or later, so Jack swallowed and braced himself. How he hated moments like these...

And yet for Jack Harkness this wouldn't be the last time he'be faced with a choice like this.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so sorry..."

Gustave turned as he helped Bernárd up.

"The teleporter only has enough energy right now to carry two," Jack broke the news. "Not three."

"Father?"

Gustave tightly hugged Bernárd and Jack looked away.

"You could come back," Gustave suggested.

"No."

"Bring us home one at a time."

"No."

"You could come back!"

"We're buried deep below the surface. It's dark. I don't know where we are," Jack spoke and every sentence seemed to cut Gustave's spirit physically. "I need co-ordinates! I could teleport myself into the ground. Merge my atoms into the Parissiene rock."

"Please..."

"Listen! If there was any way of bringing all of us to the surface I would do it. If there was any way I could stay behind myself and let you two live, I would do it!"

The actual words came as a surprise to Jack. What scared him more was the fact that the thought of it didn't scare him at all. Their lives felt far more precious than his own bohemian existence, wandering for a hundred years waiting for the man who could fix him.

But someone had to take the wheel. Controlling a vortex manipulator is more instinct than knowledge. You let the current take you where you want to go.

"I'm sorry," Jack finally said. Gustave was going to have to make a choice.

Maybe if Gustave had told him who he was it would've made Jack hesitant to agree with his choice, maybe he would've been reluctant to let the great engineer Gustave Eiffel, remembered by history for the Tower that bears his name, die alone in an empire of death 24 years before his time, but Gustave pushed Bernárd into his hands and Jack accepted him.

"Take him!" Gustave said. "I'm an old man. I don't have many years left in me. He's young. He has a future."

Both cases wrong, but Jack obviously didn't know that, did he? Of course, at the time, neither did I.

Jack nodded and before Bernárd realized what had just happened he had already inserted the right co-ordinates and disappeared in a flash.

Gustave sank to his knees in the dark, not knowing that the criticism of the Eiffel Tower would fade eventually and that the appreciation for his creation would grow with time and France.

His Tower would be an icon for the very country that previously loathed it. A symbol of hope to every patriot. A remarkable change of heart in just so little time.

Of course, he also didn't know the entire universe was going to end in about six hours. You always assume the universe will go on after you die, in whatever form or shape it happens to find comfortable, but you don't expect everything you have once known to come crashing down that very same day.

**But he didn't die that day. He died in 1923, didn't he? I read about him in school.**

Things aren't always what they seem, Amy. Especially not when I'm around. Then suddenly things go all bump in the night.

Sometimes stories don't end the way they should. Sometimes they end mid-sentence.

Sometimes...life isn't fair.

**You said this wasn't going to be a depressing story!**

D'you think I was going to let it end like this? Then you don't know me as well as you think you do. Then you don't know me at all!


	15. He Did Warn You

The streets were packed with chaos and a bit of a mess (which I hoped wasn't my fault) so we had no choice but to venture into the river by boat, which is a form of transportation I suppose. Would've been ironic if I'd gotten seasick.

Back in chains again for the final stretch made me feel like a proper VIP. Wind in my hair and all that, sailing across the Seine towards the World Fair.

Ships from different future times passed us by on the water. Tourists would photograph us with their cameras until they would fade away again like ghosts. Then machine gunfire and distant explosions rattled our collective nerves while a mob of Frenchmen gathered to see their monarchs decapitated by guillotine. Tens of thousands were executed as 'enemies of the revolution' in the _reign of terror_ following the revolution all across France.

I could actually feel the air become lighter the more we moved into the eye of the storm. It was there all right. The future temporal event. There should be an easier name for that. Like apocalypse or cataclysm. Something like that.

Marie was rather steadfast and hadn't said a word, like a very incompetent tour guide or a very good one. She was smiling for some reason, so I thought it was finally a good time to pop the question.

"Can I have my sonic screwdriver back now, please?" I asked very nicely. Just a turn of my head sufficed.

But perhaps I was boring her. Perhaps there was something else she was thinking about. Because it seemed to be she was the only one not thinking about the end of the world.

"What, do you need it?" she asked. I think she was condescending me. I hate sarcasm.

"No," I said and I shrugged it off. "Not so much need as _want_. Are boats always this slow?"

I got rather impatient by the end until I noticed troops walking by the side of the river. I recognised the blue uniform, the red hats and shoulderpads. The traditional uniform of the French Foreign Legion.

They weren't manifestations this time. _The People_ brought out the big guns but more soldiers weren't going to fix the problem. They'd only make it worse.

Something else caught my eye before we disembarked. There was still a crowd gathering at the World Fair.

"Why haven't they been evacuated yet?" I asked Marie but she said nothing and only pointed me toward the metal ladder leading back up to street levels.

For a moment I was inclined to enjoy the Javanese dancers and inspect the model Egyptian market street and the so-called negro village with indigenous people, which would probably set off the entire African hype the next few decades, if they were still to happen.

Then I saw the general was waiting for us as I expected he would be.

I stamped my boots into the puddle of water at his feet just for the hell of it.

"You're probably all wondering why I brought you here," I said to him as my chains were being released and I was left rubbing my sore wrists. My last bit of patience for that day was beginning to wane.

"No need," the general spoke unimpressed. "Marie already filled me in on the details. Of course, there's no longer any reason to lie about your companion's escape now you're made aware. I understand she contacted you..."

He was trying to get information out of me. I don't know what he was aiming for exactly but in any case it wasn't going to work on me.

"If I could give you one piece of advice before the world ends, general..." I said and I assumed his silence meant permission, because I always do. No-one's going to shut me up.

"Never underestimate Amelia Pond. It'll be the last mistake you'll ever make."

The courtyard was surrounded by soldiers, but where secret agents were keen on blending in with the crowd they simply stood in formation around the courtyard like statues, awaiting further orders.

There were some who were startled at first but most of them just treated it as another attraction of the Fair. Some sort of presentation, a changing of the guard, which in a sense it was.

The general refused to evacuate these people or announce a state of crisis. He said it would spark a global uproar and a national panic. The Fair was supposed to be a celebration of France's grandeur and achievements and announcing the end of the world and their helplessness to prevent wouldn't look good on the world stage. They had a reputation to uphold.

You humans always think so small-minded and so biased towards human life on Earth; always failing to take into consideration how the rest of the universe will be affected.

If the cancer isn't treated it will spread but will the universe even notice this tiny planet, this tiny galaxy, this puny cell when it dies?

Time can be rewritten. If Alexandre Gustave Eiffel would die, we would just be living in a world where Alexandre Gustave Eiffel died twenty years sooner than he did. Robbed of many a splendour, many a memory, many a chance meeting...and lots and lots of bridges.

But it didn't seem this world, without one of the most influential and brilliant minds of the 19th century, would last for very much longer anyway.

If only I'd known, I could've helped him. I could've done something.

One man's death is a tragedy but a million is just a number. At least that's what they tell me.

When time implodes into a single heartbeat and the Earth is the first planet lost in a wither would anyone mourn? Would anyone care? Would anyone try to save it?

There was a race of people once, long ago and in the future, that could've seen this coming, that could've prevented this but they have all gone. They suffered a different fate. Perhaps a worse fate...

Except for one. _Me._ I would save the Earth. It's what I do.

"You're still our hostage, Doctor," the general said and I looked at him.

There we stood, him and me, underneath this last bright afternoon the world would ever know, right at the centre of the storm that would soon follow. It was inevitable by then. Not even I could stop it (even if I knew) but that didn't stop me caring.

"No," I said and they looked at me as if they were surprised I had a voice, yet it was this same voice they were counting on to save their lives.

"What?"

"I said '_no'_. Didn't you hear me the first time? Now, I'm not going to spell it out for you._ No_."

And he was just flabbergasted. It was wonderful, yet so simple.

Thunderstorms were approaching. The temporal fluctuations were messing up the weather and sometimes flashes of lightning would randomly pierce a blue sky.

"I'm going to do this my way whether you like it or not. I've been putting up with you lot for much longer than you could possibly imagine so take this as my final warning."

"More words of advice, Doctor? Pray tell."

I was dealing with fools.

"You really don't know who I am, do you?" I asked. Sometimes anonimity is a relief.

Thunder rolled across the city. The general flinched, but still he did not break his concentration and wouldn't even look away. He tried to keep things under his control, tried to save face and tried to understand but all his experts returned empty-handed. There was nothing he could do.

"I'm not just a hostage. I'm the one who's going to save your life and every single life on this planet and all I ask in return is my freedom. As deals go, this one's practically a bargain."

"No deal," the general decided. "We don't need your pity, Doctor."

"I'm offering my services." I said to him. "Take it or leave it. I don't see you having much of an option."

"There's always an option."

"Yes, death is sort of an option, isn't it?" I joked.

"Take him away!" he finally said.

"I WOULDN'T DO THAT IF I WERE YOU."

Instead of thunder a big booming voice over a megaphone bellowed across the Parc du Champs de March. Guess who!

"WE HAVE YOU SURROUNDED, GENERAL. RELEASE THE DOCTOR OR WE WILL BE FORCED TO ACT."

It seemed to be coming from everywhere and all around us.

"That's my girl," I said. This was one of the good days.

"They can hear us," the general spoke.

"OF COURSE I CAN, STUPID." you bellowed across the park. "NOW WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?"

There was a vein in the general's sleep throbbing and I swore I saw his lip wobble. He hissed snidely at his inferior and told Marie to take me away with a nod of his head.

"WRONG MOVE."

Lightning struck the inferior where he stood a mere metre away from where the general was standing.

"YES, I CONTROL THE WEATHER. FANCY THAT."

"You're bluffing!" the general said, shaking in his boots as soldiers rushed to the wounded man.

"Who are you?"

I could just picture you smiling behind that megaphone, wherever you were.

"I'M TORCHWOOD," you said.


	16. Any Last Words?

It turned out poor Claude had secretly been a spy for Torchwood all along. And don't worry about the man hit by lightning: I exaggerated about his death. 9 out of 10 people survive a lightning strike and most of the blast hit the Tower anyway.

You might've noticed before how you contacted me via wireless telegraph which is not the same as a telephone. I should've noticed but sometimes I get my timelines all mixed up. That's nine hundred years of time-travelling for you in a nutshell. You get old.

Sometimes I just want to wipe my memory and start afresh and learn everything all over again. Read all Agatha Christie novels again. Now, there's a thought.

Let's go back in time a bit because in a short while that statement would've been irrelevant.

Claude brought you to the Père Lachaise cemetery which I mentioned in passing. Perhaps he thought he was bringing his secret colleagues something of value. Of course, they had been listening in on the situation for quite some time and recognised you immediately when you walked into the cemetery.

**I've been there once before. Went there with... my aunt. I visited Jim Morrison's grave.**

Are you sure it was your aunt?

**Quite sure, why?**

No reason. Now getting back to the story, and back into times when the singer hadn't even been born yet, the cemetery looked nothing like you remembered it. You probably thought it was supposed to look younger but fact is, you're not the first to underestimate the vastness of time, since the cemetery had been built there a hundred years previously.

You walked among the grey graves and tall tombs a stranger in a strange land and you suddenly remembered your decision not to put any real bullets into your pistol. It left you helpless but still you tried to look tough to the Frenchman, who was leading you straight into his trap.

Everything was smaller back then. Lots of empty graves and unplotted land left to fill with the future dead. And that's not even taking into account the two world wars yet to come.

"Oi!" you told Claude anxiously, terrified of being left alone among the graven statues. They seemed to watch you wherever you went. They seemed to ask you: why aren't you mourning?

**What?**

In a small courtyard of stone surrounded by the greenest of trees stood a man in a grey longcoat and a very thin moustache which could only have been grown on British soil.

Let's dispense with the names for the time being. He's unimportant. What _is_ important is that instead of turning you into a hostage he asked you a simple question.

He was aware of the situation and when he spoke he kept turning his head in an amateurish fashion to see whether anyone was looking. And you thought they only did that in the movies.

Somewhere in the distance there were mourning widowers clad in black clinging to their grief atop the graves of their fallen idols.

"You look like you're lost, girl," the man in the longcoat asked. "Can I be of assistance?"

How very British indeed. And of course it tipped you off but by then it was already too late.

"We know who you are, Amelia Pond," he told you. "You fit the description."

They probably have files on us, going way back to Queen Victoria and the wherewolf in Scotland, even further back if they've done their research properly. They probably learned of our little encounter with the Saturnynians in Venice.

It's what they do apparantly. They keep a track record of all my dealings on Earth.

But they had no jurisdiction in Paris, especially not back then when _the People_ were around. Maybe Italy has its own alien research department busy scavenging impossible technology fallen to Earth.

"What do you want from me?" you asked them.

They wanted Jack back. He had been recruited only six months earlier and had been snatched away under their very noses by the agents of _the People_. Betrayed. Having an immortal Time Agent in their possession meant having a serious advantage over the other nations of this world.

Foreknowledge changes everything. It changes the game.

And to think France and England were supposed to be allies.

The Torchwood agents spoke to you about the situation at hand and proposed to you a deal.

A very simple one. Your information in exchange for their resources.

You can't say knowing me doesn't have its benefits. But you have to be careful dealing with either of these organizations. When they bite they don't simply let go.

Jack found that out the hard way when he rematerialized right inside the headquarters of _the People_. Just when he thought he was free and out, for a single breath, he got one single digit wrong and he rematerializes in a flash in mid air right atop the general's model city.

He fell and crashed. Probably two hours earlier in the past as well. Just after I left. He got both time and space wrong. It was probably the temporal fluctations that messed with his vortex manipulator's ability to travel from point A to point B.

Timelines were crossing now that Jack had ventured into the past.

The model of the city buckled instantly and smashed to bits right in front of the poor man and the figure of the Eiffel Tower rolled against his feet.

No wonder he was so peeved when we spoke. Here's a man clinging to his principles for life. Probably hasn't set foot beyond that desk in ages before this happened. Never took it seriously until a man dropped from the sky and crashed his city.

"What happened to your squad?" the general asked and in between groans Jack told him about the pirates in the tunnels. There were pieces of wood sticking in his back, one of which was the Arc de Triomphe.

"They're coming," Jack said and he eyed Bernárd vomiting all over the slippery floor. Jack snapped his own neck back into place. I imagine every muscle in his body must've felt sore.

He was remembering the man they left behind but never caught his name. He had never said.

He requested a search party be undertaken or something at the very least. His wrist device told him it was two hours earlier relative to the time it had been previously. They could save him before he was even captured, but the general was unwilling to waste time and resources trying to find an unfindable man without a name. Those tunnels went on for miles.

"That man is dead," the general spoke reluctantly and he faced the window. He was facing bigger problems. "And so should you be. Why didn't they kill you, mister Harkness?"

Jack didn't answer. He didn't know.

"Technically, they did..."

"My city is under siege, mister Harkness!" the general cried out. "I need to know more! Who were these men? How can I even know you're telling the truth?"

"I can give you a name," Jack said. "But it's not going to tell you anything if you don't already know."

"Just tell me!" the general insisted.

That was two hours ago.

I'd been looking at it all wrong. My assumptions on the situation tainted my view of the situation. I didn't see clearly.

That's why I need you, Amy. A second opinion. A soundboard. Fresh eyes. Sometimes I cloud my own perception. It's an old man's folly to cling to their own assumptions of the universe, thinking you've seen it all. I never try to but it just slips in from time to time.

But the universe always has a way of surprising you when you least expect it.

Because there you were Amy Pond: walking straight into an area as well-guarded as the mightiest fort without a weapon on hand as if you owned the place. I couldn't have been more proud of you than I was then.

You faced the general and told him to buzz off and let the grownups handle it.

"You're off the case, sonny boy," you said and you put your arm into mine. "Come along, Doctor. We have work to do."

I noticed you found your own wardrobe again. You found strength in your own skin.

As we passed Marie I held up my hand and waited. She smiled, pulled out my screwdriver from her purse and handed it over without a complaint.

"Thank you," I said and put it in its proper place again on the inside of my jacket.

The general seemed more at ease now bereft of all responsibility. A giant weight seemed to have lifted from his shoulders, but despite all that he was still restless. He ordered his men to start looking for Torchwood operatives. The Prime Minister would hear of this.

"Your move, Doctor," he told us. Now we had the upper hand.

"I take it you're all out of lightning bolts?" I whispered into your ear. "Next they'll start worshipping you as a god."

You didn't respond and instead you immediately skipped the small talk and went straight to business.

"Look what I found," you said and showed me the file. "It says there was a crashed spaceship off the coast of Narbonne like ten years ago. Look at what they built out of the debris. Look!"

I did look. I looked up.

"The Eiffel Tower," I gasped and the dossier slipped from my fingers.

Your eyes were twinkling with excitement.

"The Eifffel Tower's a spaceship!" I beamed like a child in a sweetshop. This was Christmas.

The last pieces of the puzzle were finally falling into place and the Tower was just staring back at me. A memorial to a dying vessel that once traversed the stars shaped into such beauty.

"Do you really think we're going to give up this easily, miss Pond?" the general asked. It was of his opinion that just because we might save the world didn't mean we got to elude its justice.

Yet, by what should we be judged: our bad works or our good works? If saving the world isn't good enough, what is?

You turned to face the general just as fed up with him as I was.

"This is my world too, you know. If we want to save it, we have to set aside what differences we may or may not have. Why is that so hard for you to understand? We have to work together on this. Isn't that right, Doctor?" you said. "Doctor?"

Sorry Amy, I was halfway up the Eiffel Tower by then. The square was emptier since I last saw it. Despite all the ruckus in the city there were still those completely unaware of the situation or either pretending all was well. They relished in the sights and sounds of the World Fair and completley trusted their local clueless police force.

Maybe I should've warned them coming up. Maybe I should've said something or even shouted, but I was just too focused and too locked up within this mystery to think about the collateral damage. I thought figuring it out would have been enough. Or maybe being at the eye of the storm would save them. I just needed to know.

I found the bulkhead where the message had been left behind but it was completely cleaned now. Not a trace of it left where it had been scratched it into the metal. _Nobody._ _No-one._

A message lost in translation. Was it vandalism? I couldn't stop thinking of vandalism, because maybe that's what I would've done. I just couldn't shake this image in my head of graffiti, of a rebellious statement, a message to me. A puzzle for me to solve.

They said they'd found a tool beside Bernárd's body. A knife. Maybe the killer made him write it or maybe this was Bernárd's final note.

But why would the killer have done such a thing? After doing all this he escaped into the sewers and for what? What did this mean? I mean, could it have been an accident? What did this seek to accomplish?

_No-one._ What did it mean? What did the bulkhead originally say? And I started thinking why the TARDIS would screw up such a simple translation job when it hit me. What if he'd written the name of his killer?

I touched the metal where the marking had once been and felt it with the palm of my hand but all that touched my fingers was rust.

Future Bernárd must've written down the name of his killer before he died. It fit. But what did it say?

"Nemo."

I turned to see Bernárd standing behind me (blocking the magnificent view) and I couldn't help but fall silent.

"What?"

"Nemo," he repeated. Tears were filling his eyes. "Nemo Nemo Nemo Nemo Nemo!"

I moved to approach him but he backed away. Anything I could've said would've been meaningless by now. It's all been said. Words of hope (like all words) become meaningless when repeated over and over again.

"NEMO! Is that going to be my final word, Doctor? The last word I'll ever say, write, think, before I die? Is it, Doctor? Tell me!"

Screams blotted out any thought I might've had at that point. Different screams. Men were shedding off their cloaks on the other side of the Tower's first floor platform while grabbing for their guns and daggers. This was a mutiny!

The pirates' plan had been set in motion. Caught me completely by surprise. They had been hiding under the very noses of _the People_ the whole time. Hiding in the catacombs.

Then came a bang exactly like the sonic boom of an aircraft that filled up the Parissiene sky. This time it wasn't a ghost.

I ran towards the edge of the platform and instead of looking down I looked up and saw the gut of a giant spaceship hovering over the Tower. Its shadow was literally buzzing; laden with electricity and tremendous amounts of heat. Basking in its very glow felt like standing next to an open furnace.

"Captain Nemo," I said to myself before I ran back to Bernárd.

"Hang on tight Bernárd!" I told him just before the very ground seemed to shake beneath our feet.

The entire Eiffel Tower was being lifted off the ground by technology yet unknown. Some sort of tractor beam ripped the structure from the Earth and nulled its weight and mass.

The pirates were taking back what was theirs and they didn't care whoever was on it.

Before we knew it we were flying through the air and high up into the clouds until we pierced the vacuum of outer space, heading for the dark side of the moon. No point holding your breath.

"GERONIMO!" I yelled, holding on for dear life.


	17. To Understand the Night

G-forces pinned our backs to the ground and a mighty surge rose up within our chests. I thought I heard someone go 'wheee!'. Wait, that was me.

Bernárd clung to my hand as he clung to life. His survival instinct got the better of him in the end. In the end nobody wants to die. They hold on to the very last.

I could hardly resist letting out an excited yell. Best rollercoaster ever. Although technically I've never been on a rollercoaster before. Life is my rollercoaster!

The speed at which we were being dragged across space was intense. The Tower wasn't going to endure this much longer. It wasn't built for long space voyages nor acceleration of this kind. It was on the brink of falling apart beneath us.

Then I realized something was keeping it together, some force, something was preventing the air from venting out into space. They must've extended the airshell or put some kind of bubble around the Eiffel Tower. It was the most likely explanation.

As I looked out at the stars I could just see the glimmer of the bubble's outer shell. One burst and the bubble would pop. We were now at the mercy of the captain and his ship.

Nemo.

The TARDIS assumed the word on the wall to be Latin and therefore translated its meaning to my eyes. It blinded us from seeing the actual word underneath. _The name._

Captain Nemo. Captain of the Nautilus. Prince of India. A free man. Ruler of the kingdom beneath the sea. The netherworld. But more importantly...fiction.

A creation of French science fiction author Jules Verne which couldn't possibly be real. Or could it? The evidence was compelling but first things first.

The Nautilus was named after a real-life submarine, not a spaceship. He told me so himself. It didn't make sense. This couldn't be the Captain Nemo from fiction.

Or, quite possibly, the fictional character of Nemo was based on this man (this pirate) whoever he was, or even more curiously, it might've been the other way around. Many people have taken their names from the books, songs, comic books or movies that inspired them. Their alter egos. Or even stage names. Aliasses.

**Is that how you chose your name? Doctor?**

Hardly. Of course, you should know, _Amelia._

I like 'Amy'. People never took me seriously as 'Amelia'.

Shakespeare once wrote: "A rose with any other name would smell as sweet". Which was dead wrong, because if it were true no-one would wear Prada.

It doesn't take much to manipulate people's perception of things. Sometimes just a little bit of misdirection can change your entire thinking. A word or a thought can make you miss the very thing in front of you.

Just ask Houdini. He was the expert.

**Houdini? Jules Verne? Stop the name-dropping, Doctor! I get it. You've been around. Isn't there any famous person in history who isn't an old friend of yours?**

Charlie Chaplin. Future friend. Do keep up.

In that instant Saturn was a blur and Jupiter was barely a dot. We were leaving the solar system at an alarming rate. I wondered where this left the universe. The theft of the Tower separated us from ground zero by space but never ever forget time! The future was still ahead of us.

Where was Captain Nemo taking us? We were about to find out.

"Don't fight them!" I said to anyone who could listen. They were taking Bernárd away and forced us to put our hands on our heads. "Don't struggle. Just...do as they say!"

"Coward!" another prisoner spat at me with his hands pressed on the top of his Stetson hat. I immediately wanted one.

Apparantly he was American. He had this distinct moustache and goatee and the eyes of a hunter wrapped in warm colours and buttons, in direct contrast to the neat and quiet tones of the fellow to his side. Another American with a combed moustache and nervous eyes.

I felt like I had seen these men before.

When the vessel stopped our frictionless momentum had the Tower bump into the back of the ship and lightning lit up the universe. The airshell was buzzing yet I was the only one who saw it or at least realized what it was. But I couldn't do anything about it. I was a hostage. Again.

You'd never let me hear the end of it. At least I was still alive. Of course, that could all still change.

Plenty of fighting spirits among the stars and back on Earth as well. You aren't one to surrender easily, especially not when you've just seen your designated driver be abducted by aliens right before your eyes.

Of course these things always seem to happen to me. That's why always carry a toothbrush just in case.

"The Tower's gone," Marie said. "Does this mean it's over?"

No-one dared to shatter her hopes just yet and even you dared to pretend just for a moment everything had worked out for the best. You closed your eyes and thought of Leadworth.

Somehow you knew (you've always known) that when you would open your eyes that moment you would see it. The crack in time and space.

It's like someone threw a brick into a window, except there's no glass, no window and no brick. There's just the hole in time and space that's bleeding energy and the ghosts of the past and future are bleeding through the fault lines into the present. Every present.

The spot lingered in mid-air, sometimes a single dot but sometimes a ribbon, always expanding and glowing in the near dark. It was the final clue.

Reality is dented and what you witnessed in the air where the Eiffel Tower once stood was a retroactive echo of the future event that would crumple time and space as we knew it to be. As the world turned the decisive moment grew nearer.

As of that moment the temporal calamity could still happen. The symptoms were clear yet the cause unknown. What was I missing?

"This is a fight we can't win," I told the struggling captives. A small little group of fifty of which I'd recently become a part of. Tourists mostly but of course so was I, so I fit right in.

"We're in the hands of the Captain now."

The pirates concurred almost too gladly. I was treading a fine line here. The trick is to establish an equilibrium between hostage and pirate, a bond of trust or a silent promise you may say, based on the simple concept that no-one wanted to kill and no-one wanted to die.

It took a leap of faith based on assumptions that all men are equal. We all want the same things in life. You find motive, you find character and when you do you can understand. Try to imagine yourself walking a mile in their shoes and hope that they would do the same for you. Empathy can't be that hard, can it?

Understanding is the first and most important step towards reaching a mutual agreement. Remember that, Amy. If you don't want to understand there will never be harmony.

There isn't a being in the universe that does not fear what it does not understand.

So imagine these fifty people born in an era barely conscious of their place in the universe confronted with the full wonder of the universe.

"We're in space," Bernárd spoke awestruck underneath the giant bulkheads of the Tower. His knees dug into the dust on the large floor of the space they'd rounded us into. When we looked up we felt like we were standing in a giant metal cathedral stripped to the bone. Outer space was visible from all angles and therefore impossible to miss.

Vast night had engulfed us all before they'd even realized they were flying farther and farther away from the sun's warm rays. Everything they had ever loved and lost was on that tiny spec of blue toiling in the dark. It was so small they couldn't even see it anymore.

I asked to see the face of the man who had kidnapped us but their answers were short and violent. I had yet to discern their motives. What was their plan?

"You'll see him soon enough," they replied. I recognised their Asian descent, the Rigellian symbols on their swords and the original Dokka under their breath. We weren't the only ones far away from home.

Golden eyepatches and bad teeth made up a ragtag band of burly rebels fighting the dark under the banner of their captain. Their victory had left them in a dazed state, an almost drunken demeanor, and with every passing glance to each other the thirty or so pirates laughed as if there was some in-joke we were all missing.

A toothless man closed his mouth around a set of fake silver fangs. Whenever the pirate tried to smile it sent a shiver down the spines of fifty men and women.

The pirates had reunited the generator with the Tower and because of you I was still somehow assuming they were going to try and retain their former glory by restoring their ship, but fact was they already had a ship. It was hovering right above our heads.

So, why did they need the Tower? It didn't make any sense.

"Why do you need the Tower?" I asked the pirates. "It's hardly a spaceship anymore! It's a skeleton! It's hardly even airtight! No navigation, no engines, no shields...!"

"Be quiet!" they told me. Then there was a flash and a man where there was once dust.

Nemo had arrived.


	18. The Choice

Everything rocked at the whim of cosmic imbalance, floating impartially and being no longer subject to the gravitational pull of planetary objects, but that was only temporary.

There stood Captain Nemo. The name was obvious now we met face to face.

But the thing is, first impressions never do live up to our expectations. Or was it the other way around? Circles. Like a snake eating it's own tail. _Ourobouros._ What was I saying?

There stood a man wrecked by a thousand lives; a hunter, a gatherer, a monster and most of all a mortal and there was one man who knew him more than any of us. Because there's history and then there's history (well, there's always history) and then there's this.

The pirates bowed before the whites of his eyes, which seemed to eye the Tower more than they inspected his captives. Clearly a thoughtful man. I appreciate such a quality within a man.

**Of course you would.**

Without a doubt I recognised the black leather strap around his right wrist embedded with three sparkling diamonds in a diagonal row. I had seen such a strap before.

"Captain!" I said. "How's the Time Agency these days? I hear they pay well...possibly enough to buy your own ship?"

Now in return he was trying to read me. He changed not a single muscle in his expression. Oh, he was good. And definitely a Time Agent.

"Yes, I know about the Time Agency," I said reading his stare. "And I know about the ship that crashed in the Mediterranean. We're standing on it right now, am I right? Now how could I possibly know that? Think about it."

We were off on the right foot. I clapped my hands together and dared a smile and for a moment I saw the face of Simon de Leeuw peering back at me from the crowd of hostages. Talk about a captive audience!

"Have I got your attention now?" I said. "Good, very good."

Nemo was a quiet one. That should've been my first clue to how dangerous he really was.

Then he suddenly started laughing and the pirates joined in.

A good hearty belly laugh. I was almost expecting them to break out into song. Perhaps an old sea shanty. I know a few.

And they were still laughing. I smiled but didn't get the joke. Too late I realized the joke was on me.

"You'll make a fine addition to the crew," Nemo spoke as a blackened yellow dwarf planet spun into view.

The bony fingers, pale skin and pronounced cheekbones revealed malnutrition and there was hunger in his eyes. Bernárd didn't recognise him but more peculiar than that was the fact that Nemo didn't recognise him.

He couldn't have been the one who killed future Bernárd. There would've been a reaction, a hint of recognition, anything at all, instead there was nothing.

Something was out of place. Maybe it was yet to happen, but then where was the future version of the killer? Had he escaped justice in Paris?

"You think you know, little man," Nemo spoke and he had this soft, well-spoken mannerism hidden within a haunted whisper. I wondered whether the laugh had been genuine at all. His change in demeanor had changed within seconds.

He wasn't even interested. How could a man care so little? It seemed all he cared about was the Tower...

"Soon I will give you a choice," Nemo said and he thoughtfully brushed his black beard as he paced around us. "You can join my crew, or..."

My eyes were drawn to the dwarf planet that had come into view. The first ever planet (or whatever passed as a planet these days) these fifty captive humans would ever see beyond Earth. Most of them anyway.

"...you will be marooned upon Pluto," Nemo concluded, impatiently. "I take no prisoners."

"Have mercy, please!" one man cried out and Nemo shot him down with a single crazed look.

"You will find no mercy here, nor anywhere in this universe. You have your choice ahead of you."

The pirates enclosed the circle around the captives once again when their captain had turned their backs on them.

"This isn't a choice!" I yelled. "This is slavery!"

"We are all slaves. Death comes to all in the end," Nemo spoke without turning. "Sooner or later does not matter."

"Life matters!" I said.

"Then you know your decision."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

Back on Earth the floor was scattered with umbrellas, all exhibitions and market stands were abandoned and all troops gathered at the fountains. Sea gulls circled the air where the Tower had once stood, probably just as baffled as the humans were.

They sensed the energy more than any creature in the vicinity, except perhaps the flies and bugs who flew towards the anomaly only to be ripped from time and be scattered into atoms.

The troops were clinging on to the general's words: it being the only thing that stopped them from running as the civilians did. They gathered at the large fountains which no longer stood in the shadow of the Tower, instead there was a clear sky from there all the way to the Tracadéro Palace.

They begged for orders. The general had none. He was trained to deal with tangible events and physical challenges. Give him an alien invasion and he'd have saved the world. But against this he was powerless, clueless, just another primitive mind in a primitive world. Blinded by superstition and fear in the face of this natural supernatural event.

You weren't impressed with the top hats, uniforms and guns. You were one of few capable of resisting the hypnotic effects of the shattered air above. The sky around the anomaly was slowly turning dark around it as if a cloud of night was seeping out of the cracks and tainting the late afternoon.

Echoes of the past and future started to affect the tiniest actions and motions blurred into ghostly glitches. In the end there would be no telling which was the present.

Visions of prehistoric forests and flying cars were fading into being until there were dinosaurs eating spaceships and Neanderthals discovering modern machinery in the 'Machinery Hall'.

People find inspiration in the most strangest places.

"There's no time," the general said. "We're doomed."

Marie slapped him in the face. You loved that.

"Sir, with all due respect," she said, straightening her pose and dress with a curtious clearing of her throat. You rooted for her to slap him again."You're better than this."

She was literally shaking in her boots. She did that thing where she bit her lower lip in silent objection.

"I'm sorry. Someone had to do it."

You couldn't agree more.

"The world's not going to end on your watch, general," she concluded, yet he still begged to differ.

He had always known mankind wasn't ready, he had never held any delusion about this, because the message from the top brass had always been clear. But with every alien technology they managed to scrape together from the burning wreckages of crashed ships he had come to realize it was all pointless.

If and when an alien force planned to invade this primitive world of primitive minds they wouldn't stand a chance.

"Give Jack Harkness his freedom," he told Marie and he turned to tell you: "If he wants to join Torchwood he's free to do so."

The tone of his voice clearly added, sighing: "but what's the point?"

"That's it, then?" you asked. "You're just going to stand here and watch the Earth die?"

"WHAT ELSE WOULD YOU HAVE ME DO?" he bellowed and lost for breath he clutched his head. The world was ending on his watch. Ever since he lost his son he spent his days watching everything spin out of his control.

Then a man stepped forward.

"Oh, I don't know..." Captain Jack Harkness then said. "We could try and save it."

**Now there's my type of bloke! Handsome and practical. Could you make him and me kiss?**

Hey, I'm telling the story here.


	19. Companions

Cheating. That's what his plan was. He cheated. Flashed to the future. That's very him.

They never get it! You're part of events! By jumping in and out you're only making things a zillion times more complicated! There's temporal doubles, paradoxes and zigzagging timelines that would make Belgium implode.

The universe doesn't exist to be messed around with just like Towers weren't made to fly through space. If you mess with its foundations it's inevitable it'll fall apart.

Energy can be neither created or destroyed. The pieces are still there, it's just the arrangement is gone. Who knows what it'll turn into next when you start fiddling with time and space?

It's not just mankind you're changing. Ripples of the event grow outward and turn into waves, which in turn become a tsunami. That's why some things are fixed! They are the foundations of history and if you pull the metaphorical building block out from under the tower it will collapse.

How many times must I say it? It was a terrible idea and you thought it just might work.

You probably felt the after-effects of the antics of his time vortex manipulator all scrambling your insides. That's what you get for space hopping around the universe. Some might say you deserve it. It really is bad for you.

Jack asked you for a random year in the future (anything at all) and the first date that popped into your head was your birthday. A rainy day in June in the year 1989. One hundred years after the Eiffel Tower had been stolen.

One hundred years after all of this had taken place and the world was left as if nothing had happened. Except appearances can be deceiving.

"There're cars!" you noticed in the distance. "We're in the future!"

"June 1989," Jack said. "Your past. It could be the eleventh but I might be off by a few days. Or months."

A colourful new world. You couldn't help but imagine everything had just been a dream. A feeling you'd know quite well. But you weren't sure who abandoned who this time.

You were starting to doubt whether taking the arm of this stranger had been such a good idea.

"Great. Another time-traveller," you said folding your arms together to shield yourself from the cold.

Jack checked his wrist device. Rain drenched and drowned all speech and you followed Jack underneath one of the trees in the park to hide from the rain.

Jack had to correct himself: "No, it's not June. It's August," he said. "It should be here!"

It hadn't gone quite as he had expected.

"We've just traveled a hundred years into the future. Why?" you asked him.

Jack evaded the question. He was busy scanning for something. Something quite important.

"D'you notice anything different? Anything unusual?" he asked you.

"Well, there's you," you spoke dryly and Jack grinned.

"Can't say I'm not unusual. But that wasn't my point. Look around."

You played along. It didn't seem very unusual to you. In fact, to you it seemed like an ordinary park.

"Where are we? Are we in England? Oh, God, I'm barely a month old. This is so weird."

Then suddenly it started to dawn on you. Fragments of your mind pieced together to form an image. I know just the feeling.

"This is Paris. We're still in Paris. We haven't moved," you finally realized and you looked up. "The Tower. The Eiffel Tower. It's gone!"

Imagine a world without the Eiffel Tower. It's just like this one only without the Tower. How much would it have changed, you think? What impact would its absence have had?

It's almost iconic now, a landmark of France, ingrained into the popular subconscious through movies and postcards and tourism. But take it away and the world just adapts around it. Time just works that way. It's the universe plus one or minus one. The universe does not care. It's indifferent. It merely adapts.

Now imagine a universe without mankind. It could happen. Time could be rewritten.

"The Eiffel Tower was stolen a century ago," you said to Jack. "The Doctor had a hundred years to restore it but he didn't. It's not there so he must've failed. We must've failed."

"Don't say that," Jack stepped in. "There's gotta be some way to get him back."

"Look at it! It didn't happen!"

"But it can happen!" Jack spoke. "We can still do it! We can change time!"

More bad news. "It's still there. You can see it in the air. It's the crack. It's here too. One hundred years into the future. The year that I was born. It's exactly the same as it was in the past."

"The Doctor needs our help," Jack said. "And I need his."

"Who are you?"

"Call me Jack," he said.

"Is that your real name?"

"Oh," Jack beamed. "I bet he likes you."

"Nice way to dodge the question there... _Jack_." you said and you nestled in the dirt where he was digging right atop these roots of a horse chestnut tree. There was less rain, more dripping and a whole lot of shivering, but that didn't stop you looking.

"American, right? Too bad. The French greet each other with four kisses."

"Where I come from it's eight," Jack teased.

"What are you doing?" you asked.

"I used to be a Time Agent," he said in between gasps of breath. His blackened hands were digging deep into the dirt. "There's tricks we used in bad situations. A lot like this. You won't believe the ways we used to manipulate time to our own advantage. _For instance."_

While he was pulling a massive metal chest from the soil you were racking your brain to explain how he'd done it. Magicians rarely reveal their secrets but I think if you buy him a drink you're off to a good start.

Jack brushed the dirt off the lid of the chest to read its inscription with a final sigh.

"We used to go back in time and hide weapons or explosives in places where we knew we would need them in the future."

"That doesn't make sense," you said. "You can't do something before you've done it."

"You'll be amazed at the things we get away with," Jack said. "It's all temporal mechanics. Don't think too much about it. All it does is give you headaches."

Jack clasped the lock of the chest and thought of a number in his mind completely at random. Let's say, 5556. Then he entered that number, and lo and behold, the chest opened.

"Oh boy," Jack said.

You jumped when Jack pulled out a semi automatic handgun, three grenades and a bucketload of ammunition.

"What is that?"

"Necessary evil. Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire," Jack said and he stuffed the rest of the contents of the chest down the pockets of his coat. "God, I love time-travel."

He shut the chest and didn't even bother to bury or dispose of it again.

"That thing's here," you said. "The crack. A hundred years into the future."

You're missing the bigger picture. It's not just here. It's everywhere. Every time, every place. Every Paris. Past, present and future.

"Time's in flux," Jack explained. "Everything we do today will have consequences."

You weren't even listening. You were watching him brush his hands clean. There was this sudden realization within you that you weren't scared when you should have been.

The world was coming to an end and all you could think of was my future. All the adventures I would still have with River. All those things that had already happened and would happen again, except now they would never happen.

You realized that all this time you were thinking of my future and not your own. It was like there was this veil that had been put between you and your future. You used to know what it was, you used to fear it and wonder, but what happened to your future now? All you're left with then was this aching feeling you were supposed to be somewhere, but you couldn't remember where. Somewhere important.

I'm right, aren't I? You don't have to say anything.

Like a dream half remembered in the morning dawn in that fuzzy state between sleep and waking up. If only you could remember him.

The present suits you, Amy Pond.

But if there's one thing I've learned from all my travels is that no matter how fast or far you run the imperfect past and future perfect will catch up with you in the end. Like a deadline or an ex-wife.

Past and future times were about to come crashing down around you. And sometimes you don't have a choice but to strap in for the ride. That's what I always do.

The clock was still ticking. Time was still running out everywhere, every time. But 1889 was key. You had to go back.

"Ready to save the world?" Jack asked.

"Sure," you said charmed. "It's not like I've got anything better to do."

You took his hand in the rainswept green heart of Paris and just before you flashed back to 1889 you added: "I'm single, by the way."

You returned like you hadn't left at all. 1889 could've blinked and missed it.

Jack told his Torchwood colleagues the exact contents of that chest in the future, and ordered them to make sure it would be there for him to find in his past and their future.

It's simple, really. I don't know why anyone would find that complicated.


	20. Unification

"But why call it a duck pond when there aren't any ducks?" the Doctor said. "Why call it a spaceship when it doesn't ship through space?"

He took his eyes out from under Amy's sheets.

"Anything?" Amy asked, squeezing her eyes shut in the bed trying not to think about the pain and the Doctor froze.

"Let's not go there," he said.

"Let's go somewhere else. Let's return to the late 1880's and the only man on the planet rejoicing the fact time and space were spilling over. Every cloud has a silver lining, I suppose."

**Why's it taking so long?**

It had been an unpleasant visual looking at the progress of her leg. He was apprehensive about telling her more and told her not to look until he said so.

"Time energy is seeping through the cracks and I can absorb it and use it as fuel," Jack said. The batteries of his time vortex manipulator went wonky three decades back after one jump too many and that kind of energy doesn't come by often, especially in 19th century Britain.

Unless you live atop a rift in time and space in Wales and even then there's no guarantees. There's always more risk than reward. But anyway, Jack had a plan. A rather selfish plan that basically involved finding me. Something he had been trying to do for the past thirty years.

**Wait, so how old is Jack?**

When ever did age become an issue for you? He's 60. Possibly. There's a lot we don't know about Captain Jack Harkness. He's just a big a mystery as Nemo. It's a whole department of mysteries at the Time Agency. All shadows and misdirection.

But let's get back to the general. He has another good scene left in him. I reckon he was standing in awe of the technology displayed in the Machinery Hall at the World Fair.

Created by the finest minds in his time, these were some of the greatest and wackiest inventions produced by pure human ingenuity. Things that shouldn't work, things that can't possibly have been thought of sober but there they were!

"All of this will be lost within the hour if you don't come through," the general spoke to Jack. "I've spoken to your Torchwood. They were right about one thing, though. When it comes to the world there are no borders or boundaries. Through co-operation we will succeed. Alone we fail."

I imagine it must've been hard for this patriottic man to say those words. With every passing century the world of humankind would expand. First it's families and then tribes, then it's communities, villages, towns which turn into cities. Provinces connect to become countries which will evolve into nations. Nations work together to form a connected continent and then the world becomes one. If they want to be. If mankind puts the effort into it and stops being petty. Then there's an entire universe out there. This is only the beginning.

"The whole is always greater than the sum of its parts," Jack said. "Tricky times, these. This century is reaching its end and a new era is coming. There'll be unification one day, but it'll be a long and hard road, full of hardships and death. But one day the human race will stand together as they face the universe."

"Unification..." the general repeated. What an unimaginable, terrifying concept to a man in such primitive times, but the seed was now planted. An idea that could grow into something far bigger than man one day.

"Captain!"

Of course time isn't set in stone. Everything this World Fair represented could be wiped out in a single second. The human race will have always and never have existed. And the Silurians. Even metal dogs.

"Maybe those fifty people up there in space are better off," the general concluded. Oh, you really are a depressing lot, aren't you?

"Don't worry, sir," Jack said. "We're going to get them back."

You entered thinking you were interrupting but your timing was spot on. "Cab for Captain Harkness."

"Gotta go," Jack said. "History's waiting to be written. Let's write it together."

The general hesitated.

"Good luck, Captain," the general said and he offered Jack a hand. Jack understood the gesture.

There are some things you can't control. Some things you have to let go.

The fate of the world now rested on his shoulders.

The vortex manipulator had stuffed itself with pure temporal energy once again and was primed for another hop. Your very atoms were sore after two jumps but you had one more to go.

"Does it always hurt like this?" you asked Jack.

"Oh, yes," he said, crunching his neck muscles. You handed him back the vortex manipulator and he strapped the device wrapped in leather around his wrist.

You watched the hole in time and space burning bright in the fading afternoon sky one last time before committing to the jump. "Oh, this better be worth it."

"Ready?"

Jack explained how he was able to follow the trail left behind by the spaceship that took the Eiffel Tower. What he didn't explain were the risks.

"Good luck," Jack spoke and he must've been terrified.

Then there was a final flash.

There were easier options, certainly. Like finding a past or future version of me to help or sneaking aboard the Tower in the past before it had been stolen. But there were risks there (as Jack knew) and he had already complicated things enough.

You always have to be careful messing with temporal mechanics. There were once creatures that roamed the Varnacious Morrow in the dawn of time: the transcendent changelings of the Pantheon of Discord that fed off the energy of potential history and unrealized realities and Reapers that feasted on paradoxes and temporal anomalies. They found tricks to alter the past, change reality and soak up the energy of billions of years of history unwritten.

**What, the Weeping Angels?**

Who knows? They're more myth now than memory, Discord disbanded or the undo-ers undone. They only exist in whispers nowadays at the edges of history; having been tricked by their own devices.

That's what you get for trying to control the universe. It bites.

But the stories did make me wonder: _what if it were them_? This had the Trickster written all over it and it was worth a shot. I faced up and started shouting at whoever might be listening in.

"You can come out now!" I yelled and the crowd of onlookers, trembling in fear at the mayesty of the universe outside and clinging to the inside of the Tower afraid of falling out, started staring at me. That was good. Perhaps they might learn a thing or two.

"I know you're there! Listening, watching...that's what you always do. Manipulating from the shadows! Whoever you are! Stop sneaking about and show yourself! Isn't it about time you started gloating and twirling your moustache? Or something? Come on! What are you afraid of? No-one'll know. It's just you...and me."

The fifty hostages held their breath as if at any moment they were expecting a giant foot to come down from the ceiling and crush me like a bug.

But there were no bugs today and no transcendent beings. That was a relief. Of course, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence but I wasn't exactly going to strain myself to fight imaginary monsters battling real pirates. Where had they gone off too anyway?

Then I realized how embarassing it had become. Nothing had happened. So I turned on the spot and changed the subject. It's what I do best.

"Why bother with recruitment anyway? What'd they want us for? Swab the decks? Talk in funny voices? Where have they gone anyway?"

"Back to their ship, most likely," the American in the cowboy hat said. "They don't even have to bother looking out for us. I mean, even if we manage to escape, where could we go? We're in space, for god's sake!"

I watched the man spit on the ground and pull up his belt. He was a neatly dressed cowboy, streaks of grey in his moustache and goatee. It was like he had been primed for a Wild West Show.

"Excellent," I realized and I moved on to the next one hurled up on the floor in his travelling coat. "And who might you be?"

"My name is of no importance," the man said contrite.

"Serbian, am I right?" I said to him. The look he shot me was enough to confirm my powerful methods of deduction. I heard a thick accent underneath his struggling English, but he wasn't new to the language. It was his shyness that made him a difficult speaker.

Also he had the name Nikola Tesla written on the inside of his travelling coat.

I counted the scientists among the civilians. They were sticking out from the crowd like molecules in a field of ions.

"We're trapped here and théy know it," I concluded and I started pacing. It helps me think.

"They're just rubbing our faces in it. They control the air, they control the gravity, they control our fates, but there's one thing they didn't account for though. One single fatal mistake in their arrogance..."

"What's that?" the cowboy asked.

"Me."

I love it when they play right into my hand.

"I'm the Doctor and people always seem to make the mistake of underestimating me."

"But we are helpless!" Simon de Leeuw cried out. He finally scraped up the courage to stand up from the crouching crowd and address me. "You just said so yourself!"

"I said we're trapped. Not helpless. Think about it. No seriously, do just that. Think.

They can control the air, the ship, the gravity, but there's one thing they can't control and that's your thoughts. So think!"

"What thought would have us saved from this predicament, Doctor?" Nikola asked.

"Do I even need to tell you? Look at yourself! The incredible, indomitable, ingenious human race. Look at where you're standing. One of the greatest achievements in human engineering. An icon of everything you're capable of doing if you just put your minds to it. Doesn't matter what nationality, religion or ideology you have. You're humans! You're Earthlings! All for one and one for all!

"Don't you know who you are? You're Buffalo Bill, Nikola Tesla, Claude Debussy, Vilhelm Bjerknes and Simon de Leeuw! And you're brilliant! Every single one of you! Need I say more?"

The human race can achieve so much greatness. All it takes for them to realize that is a great, big kick up their backside once in a while and a little bit of inspiration.

You do your best work under stress. It's why wars have produced the greatest inventions on your planet. And sometimes the most unlikely idea comes from the most unexpected places...

"But we have nothing!" the Norwegian physicist Vilhelm spoke. "Nothing to work with! How'd you expect us to find a way back to Earth when we have nothing!"

"Ah," I said and I rushed to the far end of the platform and back again carrying along a mysterious load. "But we have this!"

It was the object the pirates had stolen from the warehouse basement and had left behind in their arrogance. The dead heart that used to belong and power the ship whose skeleton we were now standing in. It was time to reunite the two.

Then a thought hit me as I carried the dead generator over to the scientists and civilians whose attention I captivated.

_Unification._

I unveiled the object that had been covered in a black sheet all this time and of which I had no idea what it might be, but it only lead to more questions.

It was a glass box with golden edges, like frames. I found out that despite its size it weighed so little I could carry it with one hand, but of course I wouldn't do that. I've been known to break things.

"It's empty! An empty box!" Buffalo Bill spoke and I looked closer at the contents of the box.

There was a slight buzz about it, an echo of life perhaps, or power, a shimmer in the glass that suggested unnatural composition. I realized it wasn't going to be easily broken. If the intention was to break it.

"No, there's something inside it," I said and I pointed at the bottom of the box. I lifted it up so I could look at the bottom. It was a lifeless shard of glass that rattled around inside it when I shook it.

**Don't shake the box!**

I was expecting something a little more impressive, something the troops could rally behind, and found myself a little bit disappointed, until I remembered the age old truth:

Appearances can be deceiving.

"Stand back!"

I set the sonic screwdriver to setting 99 and aimed it at the box I had just set down. With a flick of a switch and a buzz of a green light the expected unexpected happened. The shard of glass started glowing, started floating towards the centre of the glass box and shooting lightning bolts at its edges.

Then I stopped and the glowing died again. An echo of life or a resurrection? A reawakening? What had I done? The shard fell into its original position( intact I might say). Why did I stop?

I suddenly realized the ugly truth and I looked back at my ragtag band of fellow travellers. I saw the bigger picture now and knew the role the shard of glass would play in this story. I recognised it for what it was.

This would become a choice a hundred times worse than the captain posed. This was torture.

"It's either them or you," I gasped, knowing the truth. It was the only thing I managed to say before my breath departed from my body leaving me utterly speechless.

That tiny shard within the box was the cause of everything that's been happening and will happen on Earth.

I did it. _It was me._

But just a little earlier, Jack and you rematerialized inside a dark abode. The air was cold and tinny.

Your sudden presence triggered lights overhead to shine into the darkness and to your surprise that darkness seemed to go on forever. An expansive nothingness with only a few lights shining down upon the metal floor in puddles.

"Where are we?" you asked, fixing the bones of your body back into their place.

Jack found a round window with blue glass. From there you could see the Eiffel Tower floating beneath you in a giant bubble. The ship you were on and the cargo it was dragging behind it were drifting in the orbit of a dwarf planet and its four moons.

"Pluto," Jack answered and cocked his gun.


	21. No Third Option

Things happen. Good things, bad things, all things, and sometimes if you're very lucky there're amazing things...

Oh, Amy, I was so messed up in my head at that point I was practically jamming the end of my sonic screwdriver into my forehead. I was making a mess of things. Granted, that's nothing new but sometimes when I make mistakes I don't get lucky. You can't plan for lucky.

I'd left you there. On Earth. At least, that's all I ever knew. You were gone and I was here. You were collateral damage and you were my responsibility.

You can't believe how many times I've had the fate of planet Earth in my hands. It's really annoying sometimes. Can you imagine being the smartest person in the room and the only one capable of joining the dots? I was panicking and I had every right to while everyone else was still distracted by the pretty lights. I had to explain the situation to them somehow.

**I babysat a friend's nephew once. The menace spent the entire night chewing the edges off tables.**

Now imagine that but a hundred times worse. That toddler's going to be the end of human history. What would you do, Amy?

Sometimes alone isn't enough. Sometimes I need help. I realized it too late and played right into fate's hands. It's not often I'm fighting time itself. Reality is so frail it tends to split into apart like a single cell splitting to become two, then four, then eight and exponentially increasing.

Somewhere out there, there's a universe where we were just sipping coffee in a Parissiene café, nothing on our minds and everything in it's right place. On second thought, that would've been extremely dull.

Oh, these people are brilliant. They really are. Scientists and artists and curious minds unite. How could I possibly persuade them to let it go?

Of course an inventor of Nikola Tesla's ilk could never resist the temptation of analyzing the contents of an object like this despite his phobias. I know I couldn't but I had to.

I would've given anything to just sit there and watch him figure it out but there was no time and definitely no space. There was no third option. Not anymore.

"Never mind the box!" I quickly said and I clasped my hands together. I leaped around the box trying to draw as much attention away from it as possible. "We should take a poll. Show of hands. Who wants to be a pirate? Anyone?"

Of course they didn't respond. Half of them still hadn't a clue what was going on, where they were or what choice they were expected to make. Toddlers, every single one of them. The rest of them were still completely in the dark of the implications of everything that had been building up to this moment. They would definitely not ever be the top of the class here.

"How did you do that?" Bernárd spoke and I had to hide my sonic screwdriver.

"Ignore the toys!" I said.

"Can you do that again?" the Swedish scientist asked: he wanted me to repeat my initial experiment. They were all gathering around it now. I'd realized it too late!

"Just look away from the box! _It's just a box_!"

What would I have to do to draw their attention away from it? Do a song and dance?

"The light's fading..." Bernárd noticed. "What's wrong with it?"

"Everything's wrong with it. Did I say everything? I meant nothing. Nothing's wrong with it."

Nikola slowly rose from his position. They were turning on me. If they hadn't the world would've been doomed. Sometimes I need people to challenge me. I need people to confront me.

How else will I ever learn?

Sometimes the details are the story like a tiny shard of glass in a box.

Who knows where it could've come from? I don't. Think of the backstory it has. How did it get inside that box? Who harnassed its power? What gave it power to begin with? Maybe it's an adventure yet to come; maybe it's something we'll never hear of ever again.

The universe has a life of its own. Better yet: billions upon billions of lives. It's practically teeming with it (almost like an infestation) but it would be so boring without it.

It's life that gives the universe colour or at least gives those colours a name. It brings order into chaos and chaos into order. Life is amazing.

**Yeah, well it bloody well hurts. My leg is killing me! When will it be done, Doctor? I can't stand it anymore.**

Give it time. Let's not mess with your leg anymore. Before you know it you'll be sprouting a sixth toe.

**Doctor, you're not helping!**

I watched inspiration strike Tesla like someone struck him with an arrow. The spark of genius and I had to annihilate it. Just when they were catching up I had to nip their brilliance in the bud.

Bill stayed as far away from the box as possible, but I did catch him peering over the shoulders of others at times to see what the fuss was all about. Nikola crouched down beside it and his eyes almost burned holes into the glass the way he was ogling it. And the funny thing was he never took his hands out of the pockets of his travelling coat. Then he looked up at me.

"Who are you?" he then asked. I would've told him not to mind me but then I realized this was the perfect opportunity to distract them.

"I'm the Doctor," I said. Because that's who I am.

"You know what this is, don't you? Yet it's nothing our century has ever seen before. The power of the heavens locked inside a tiny glass box. I take it this is not from our world and neither are you, Doctor."

His deductions were spot on. He wiped his nose with a hankerchief and immediately brushed his moustache back into position.

"You're all far away from Earth," I told him and perhaps it was for the best that they never saw it again.

"So that lightning in a box: it's a power source, am I correct? Your tool made it come alive," Buffalo Bill spoke.

"It's not alive, it's a box," I said. "Boxes can't be-"

Then it hit me.

Could I save the world and save these fellow travellers? Could I have my cake and eat it too? You can when you're a time traveller. But it's still the same cake.

The temporal cataclysm that would engulf Earth was still in the future. It's cause was here on board the Eiffel Tower trapped inside that little box and my name wasn't Pandora.

"Whatever's inside that box, it can help us go home," I said. "But by doing so we risk its destruction. The Earth will cease to exist in past, present and future when we go back. So we can never go back."

They had a hard time both understanding and believing any word that came from my mouth. Astonishing event after event had been piled upon them with every passing minute and they had hardly been gone from Earth for more than twenty minutes.

How could I explain to them I couldn't save them? I _shouldn't_ save them? Just by trying I would be endangering the lives of billions.

"I can't," I said.

What would you have done, Amy? Would you have let them walk into the arms of the pirates as slaves? To swab the decks of their spaceship for the rest of their lives? Would you have sacrificed fifty men and women to save history?

There was only one thing left to do. Beg. In the end everything depended on the mercy of a single man. And Jack knew that man.

"I never knew why he chose the name Nemo," Jack said. "He had a reputation of being a very dangerous man. Silent and deadly. A specialist. Even among those at the Time Agency he was considered a wild card and that's saying something."

Like whispers in the dark I had frequently heard of the Time Agency before. Basically they were two steps below the Time Lords in the hierarchy of legends but harder to track down.

They were once a respected organization in the Boeshane Galaxy. There were those who were proud to have been recruited, like Jack. But somewhere down the line this interstellar temporal police agency turned into little more than a group of spies and assassins. A secret police of a silent dictator.

I never actually crossed paths with the Agency before but I was once mistaken for an Agent.

"I met him only twice and he never said a word to me," Jack said to you, strolling down memory lane while strolling down the dark gut of the ship. "We Time Agents never gathered in assigned meeting places more than three or four at a time. And sometimes he was there and usually that meant trouble."

"Why?" you asked.

"We called him 'The Cleaner'. It was his specialty: cleaning up the mess we left behind. Sometimes even when the mess hadn't been made yet. He eradicated men, women and children from time as if they never existed. The most elegant cover-ups no-one will ever hear about. He came and left leaving nothing behind. Not one trace he'd ever been there; not one trace anyone else had ever been there. And when we asked his name he simply said: I am no-one."

"So you were a Time Agent too?" you asked and Jack signalled you to hush your tones. "Sorry."

"I was the youngest recruit they'd ever approached. Fresh from the Cradanna: first of my people," Jack said. His chuckle soon waned. "There was still some awe for the Agency back then. Respect. That was before they found out about the experiments. The massacres..."

"So, I get all that," you said. "I get where you came from and how you met the Doctor...but what I don't get is how you ended up in 1889."

You followed Jack as closely as possible, sticking to the shadows as close as possible to the point you were scraping your backs past the walls. Quite painfully.

"Don't step into the light," Jack said, holding you back. "Watch where you put your legs."

Undoubtedly you liked the way he noticed your legs.

**Don't talk to me about my leg!**

Right. Sorry.

"So you were a Time Agent, yeah? When you met the Doctor?" you asked.

"I met the Doctor years later," Jack spoke. "I'd left the Time Agency by then."

"Why?"

"Hey, I didn't expect a kind of _Spanish Inquisition_! Maybe it's about time I started asking some questions about you. Last time I saw the Doctor he was travelling with a blonde."

"Really?"

"So, who are you?"

A noise interrupted your thoughts and Jack pressed a hand against your mouth just in case. With his other hand he aimed his gun at the dark.

There was movement there. Shadows in the light like passing silhouettes, except upon closer inspection there was nothing there, and you dare not move any closer. Cold shivers ran down your back.

"We have to find the Doctor," Jack spoke.

United in a common goal didn't stop you from being separated into individual paths.

"That's your plan then?" you asked. "Find the Doctor? What if he doesn't have a clue? What do we do then?"

Thirty years of enduring and of not getting what he wants, of living in muck in 19th century Britain, might well take a toll on a man. It's the final lengths of the journey when you're inches away of your final destination but too tired to run: that's agony. Tugging at the heart strings they call it.

I call it pain. Mental pain. Because it hurts. It's not a broken heart but a broken mind when there are no more options left. It's being torn.

Apart.

"I need the Doctor!" Jack whispered through clenched teeth. There was so much at stake but sometimes you can't help being selfish and from there a time-traveller always faces a slippery slope. A total disconnect from reality. What is reality?

The world around you will go on without you. When we step back into the TARDIS the Earth of 1889 is just a memory. And what are we left with?

Personal experience. Is the life of a time-traveller worth more than of those who take the slower path? Because we see the bigger picture. Does that make us more important?

The general was right to distrust us. Perhaps even to hate us. There were times I couldn't help but think of big and little people. The important times and the events that change history forever and just the average day. Who am I to judge it? Because I'm more clever?

There have been those that took it upon themselves to change time, to change history, and even reality to fit themselves. Those of my own race, my own friends...my own kind.

Who are we to judge right and wrong? I don't know sometimes. A thought too much might have us spiralling down. A single word in the wrong place at the wrong time...

Sometimes someone has to make the tough decisions. Sometimes someone has to make a stand and do what they think is right, especially if they have no other choice. Or the universe might just be doomed...

"Amy, no!"

You walked into the light as if acting on a dare. A leap of faith perhaps. And a smile. You could've walked into a snake pit, perhaps right into the hands of the enemy. You had no idea.

Jack had to follow you. The moment he stepped after you he knew it was a bad idea.

In the darkness of this vast ship there were puddles of light and within these puddles of light that shone from above time and space merged.

The mildly telepathic ship sent you where you wanted to be. Lingering in the non-places is unhealthy.

Call it a teleport and you'd be wrong. It was an opening like doorways into different levels.

Suddenly you were on a different deck. The same darkness pervaded the giant hallways but this time you weren't alone. There were masked men squirming on the ground with their hands tied to the floor with shackles. All wearing the same clothes. All breathing the same air.

You stepped out of the light unsure of your new surroundings, half expecting Jack to follow you, but there was only silence.

"Hello?" you asked the men but they did not move. How many were there? Hundreds? You could only see those that were shackled in the light.

You had made a choice and you were lucky. Jack on the other hand wasn't and that's putting it mildly.

"I love being lucky," I told Bernárd. "I love chance encounters. Magical adventures. Impossible things."

We were staring out at the universe and I could feel Bernárd's wonder. Wonder is what keeps me going.

"I can save you. It's what I do," I said and I leaned both elbows upon the ledge that separated us from oblivion. The air bubble glinted in Pluto's reflective light below. "It's what I always do. But should I? Should I this time?"

"But even if I do," I said. "Even if I do save this poor lot _and_ Earth from total destruction. Even if I perform a miracle..."

I had to face him. The poor boy. He barely saw me as he stared out into the universe. He barely felt the cold.

"...it means you'll have to die," I said.

The news had to be broken and with it broke the promise.

Time can be rewritten. Except it shouldn't be.

Some days everybody lives. But there's always a price.

_There's always a price._


	22. Intermission

Inside the dimensional hub there are limits to what you can see. The human mind can only see so much. Like an M.C. Escher drawing, you can only see the young woman or the old woman. The rabbit or the duck. You can't see both at the same time.

And like I said, the ship was partly telepathic: It could sense your commands, feel your destination and more often than not Jack's subconscious found him staring down the barrels of a dozen weapons. Maybe the prospect of immortality had made him yearn for death or possibly put the concept upon such a high pedestal that it could never be reached (but always be desired). Did he love death? Did he have a death fetish? I think he had a fetish for everything.

**So we were on a ship, right? Alone?**

What? Haven't you been paying attention to anything I've been telling you? Yes, you're on a ship. It's the ship that stole the Eiffel Tower and it didn't fly itself. Because it's dead, you see. It was dragged into orbit by another spaceship around Pluto at the far end of the galaxy.

**Why Pluto?**

I don't know. _Poetic licence. _Keep up, will you. Here I am spinning a web of tales involving complex themes, plot twists, famous characters from Earth history, challenging moral dilemmas and you can't even remember basic plot points!

I don't know why I even bother with you sometimes. I could show you the marvellous wonders of the Medusa Cascade and you'd wonder why there aren't any trees.

**You just said you needed to be challenged sometimes.**

Challenge? Yes, just don't ask stupid questions.

**It's not my fault you're a bad storyteller. I zone out when you get all preachy and artsy. I like it when things blow up.**

The Doctor shot her another look. A double take. _"Bad storyteller?_" Then he tutted once.

"My stories aren't meant to be told. They're meant to be lived. It's adrenaline!"

He got up from his stool, made laps around Amy's bed and popped his head outside the curtains as if to check up on something. Amy wondered whether the grandfather clock was still there or whether it had been something she dreamt.

"But all those things you said about me," Amy said. "About the present. You couldn't have been more wrong."

The Doctor promptly shut the curtains, turned around on the spot and placed both hands at the end of her bed.

"Really? Wrong?" he spoke offended and he gazed directly into her eyes.

"You may know all the numbers in pi," Amy simply spoke twiddling her thumbs. "but you don't know half about humans. Especially me."

"You're a complicated person, Amy Pond," the Doctor admitted. "But that doesn't mean you're unreadable. In fact, you're easy!"

"No, I'm not! _-Easy_?" she said.

The Doctor clumsily waved his hands about explaining things.

"You practically say everything that comes to mind. Not a thought left unsaid."

"That's _so_ not true," Amy spoke. "You're quite the opposite. You think something and then say the exact opposite. You lie!"

"No, I don't."

"You just did there!"

"I might have. Look! We're getting off track. I was busy. What was I doing?"

Amy smiled. "Telling me I'm easy apparantly."

Suddenly the Doctor realized she was lying in a bed and the curtains were drawn all around. Whatever happened, no-one would see...

"No. No!" the Doctor told himself and he slapped his forehead. "I had a point with this. What was it?"

"Your point?"

"Stop it!" the Doctor said. "Not funny."

He started speaking softly now; almost to himself. "You were so much better before yesterday. So much stronger."

"What happened yesterday?" Amy asked.

The Doctor sighed.

"Did you know why you stepped into that hub?" the Doctor said.

"It's just a story, Doctor."

"You did it because you had to. Do something. Anything," the Doctor started telling. "Anything at all."

Amy disagreed. She tucked herself in underneath the sheets while rolling on to her right side and shoulder without moving her legs too much. Her body groaned with cramps of having been lying in the same position too long.

"I have a goal in life," she said. "I'm not just aimlessly wandering, like you."

"Am I?"

"I just want to see the world, I mean the universe, before I settle down. Maybe have kids. We all have to grow up one day."

"Just not today, I take it?" the Doctor said. "How does that prove me wrong, exactly? If the present was a location you'd practically be camping there. Pitching a tent. I should rephrase that..."

"No, I'm not!" Amy said. "I mean I wouldn't be. Whatever. I'm just going to use these travels as inspiration for the children's books I am going to write one day. With all this stuff I can make a fortune."

"It worked for Lewis Carrol," the Doctor noted and his voice turned down a notch as he reminisced and looked to the future. The end of the story.

Amy recognised that look on his face. _Now who's easy? Gotcha!_

"I'm kidding!" Amy said smiling but unconvincingly. "I love travelling with you. It's fun. Apart from the whole leg situation. Obviously."

The Doctor pierced through the cloud of comfort with such a simple question. It didn't even sound serious until an awkward silence fell.

"Why are you here, Amy Pond?" he asked. "Why are you really here?"

Despite everything the question still felt unexpected. The answer lingered in a half-drawn breath and an open mouth, but her eyes were void of thoughts. Her heart was blank as if she didn't mean any of her emotions. They were just there.

Was she crying?

"I don't know," she said. She couldn't bring herself to admit she couldn't remember.

The Doctor smiled. "Let's find out together."

He jumped next to her in bed, Amy underneath the sheets and he fully dressed on top of them and hands patiently lingering on his gut with his legs crossed.

He checked to make sure his bow tie was still in place.

"Where was I?" he said. "How many hours were there left? In the story, I mean."

He checked his wrist watch.

"Five? Maybe four and a half," Amy said scootching over slightly while the Doctor resumed to gaze up at the ceiling, lost in imagination. "I did pay attention, you know. If I don't you'll just make stuff up."

"What? Like a spaceship stealing the Eiffel Tower? I wouldn't dare."

He looked at her from the corner of his eyes and she felt safer, even though they both knew she'd never admit it.

"Go on then, Doctor. Tell your fricking story."

"I was just going to. Shush."


	23. Spoilers!

"Perhaps I shouldn't have told him, but I thought he deserved to know.

It's one thing to keep any sort of hope alive, but when all you're left doing is leading a lamb to a slaughter...

I couldn't live with myself if I didn't tell him the truth, even if it meant telling a young boy he was going to die. Seventeen years is just too short a while to spend on this little blue rock, but it's better than not ever having lived at all, I suppose. Or am I wrong?"

The Doctor turned his neck to look at Amy but he wasn't seeing her. He looked deep into her eyes as if reflected in her whites he would find inspiration. She was his muse.

"Is it better to have lived and lost than to never have lived at all?" he asked.

"You mean love," Amy corrected him.

"Is there a difference?" he told her and exhaled. His warm breath made her skin tingle.

"Life matters," he said again but there was something in his eyes that made her think he was only trying to persuade himself. He turned to look up at the ceiling again.

"What if you could know how it ends? Perhaps there's something you alone could do in this universe. Something you were born to do. Something that you're going to do at some point in your life. Perhaps there is some bigger meaning, some bigger purpose to your existence. You never know. Your part in the play that is history. Your role in the story.

"If I knew, would you want me to tell you? What if it's something bad, something terrible and you can't change it. It has to happen.

"What if it's a cookbook? What's good for the shepherd is seldom good for the sheep. What if the purpose of your life was to needlessly die just to spark the events that lead to your own death? Trapped in a perpetual circle of death? Would you want to know?"

"So it's spoilers, basically," Amy said, getting right to the meat of the question, which bothered the Doctor. He preferred the long speeches.

The way in which she casually dismissed his deep thoughts disturbed him but he wasn't going to let it show.

"Spoilers!" the Doctor agreed loudly before sighing. He was almost starting to hate that term as much as he loved it. He loved that. Amy noticed him beaming just thinking about it while the lights in the ceiling started to flicker.

Nurses patrolled the corridors around them carrying candles as they checked on their patients in the frequent blackouts. The Doctor had his sonic screwdriver to fix the lamp above their heads.

"Yes," she said and the Doctor accepted the data and processed it in his mind and logged it for future reference. Then he smiled.

"We all die in the end," the Doctor said. "Even me. Every story has an ending, even this one, and in my experience every ending is a beginning. Perhaps that's what life is. A circle. _Zero_. One big temporal paradox without beginning or end. It just starts all over again. A blip in the span of the universe but what a blip it is. It's worth living again and again and again."

Big smile until it waned abruptly. "Except for Bernárd. He gets to die over and over again. Just the once. Forever. Trapped in a perpetual circle of death."

He sighed silently this time but Amy heard it.

"Perhaps we're better off without fate. Without spoilers. We shouldn't go look for it. Less fate, more fun: 42's always worked for me."

"Who needs spoilers, right?" Amy said.

"Bernárd did."

The Doctor continued his story.

"Why are you here, Bernárd?" I asked him. "You knew what this place was. What happened here. What will happen. Yet you came here despite all that. Why?"

The boy tried to hide his tears, tried to wipe them away, and in the end he stopped caring. If anyone deserved to rage against the universe it was him. An ordinary boy. The most important thing in creation. The whole universe will be different if he doesn't die.

"I'm sorry, Bernárd," I said to him. "The universe is conspiring against us, the status quo has been altered, but this time the wound is fatal. And we were sitting on the murder weapon the entire time."

"Why me?" he suddenly threw at me and for a moment I was actually at a loss for words.

"Why am I the one destined to die?" he asked.

"Collateral damage," I let slip from my lips.

"What?"

"You didn't answer my question," I asked him again (dodging his) and he pondered for a while. His lips were trembling. He didn't know where to place his hands. So I grabbed his shoulders and looked at him as I look at you now.

"You can tell me, Bernárd."

"I don't know," he said and he had to turn his gaze away from me. I think he couldn't handle looking me in the eyes. I wanted to apologize but it was too late.

"I didn't care anymore. I just wanted it to end."

"Be careful what you wish for."

A spark of realization became a concept in his mind.

"I did this?" he asked.

Now this would've been a perfect time to lie.

"Yes," I said. I plucked a bit of dirt from the front of my tweed jacket.

The truth can't help it when it hurts.

He broke down, without tears, holding himself like a mother who couldn't be there. Who was never there.

"So he died for nothing."

"Who?"

"My father is dead. He sacrificed his life for mine! He's dying right now in the catacombs! He could be dead already and it was all for nothing!"

The catacombs. That's where the general's squads disappeared to. Dead. I realized he was talking about Gustave. Last I heard he was protecting you which could mean you were in danger. Of course you were in danger. When aren't you in danger?

**I learned from the best.**

Well, I wasn't good enough. I lacked information. It couldn't help but at least knowing what happened could put my mind at ease.

"Gustave Eiffel is dying?" I asked for clarification and his silence told me everything I needed to know.

Whatever I would do or whichever I would choose to do (sacrifice or salvation) there was no way to fix time. Time was altered. Something altered time and messed up the status quo and those tiny little ripples set the stage for the waves of a gigantic tsunami.

The world's going to end because someone threw a pebble.

"I CAN'T WIN THIS!" I shouted.

"Doctor?" a voice suddenly came. "Doctor, is that you?"

I turned on the spot when I heard your voice. It couldn't be, but unlikelier things have happened. _Impossible things._

Where did it come from? What was it? What did this? Could it help to ask?

You heard me. That meant you were alive. But did that mean you were safe? How could I find out?

Was I hearing voices, was I imagining things or was I actually communicating telepathically with Earth in some way?

"Amy, can you hear me?" I spoke to thin air. Too soft perhaps. If there was some way to contact me I knew you'd be the one to find it.

"Bernárd, come with me," I told him. We were going to follow that signal together. "You'll be safe...with me...because I have a future. Time will have to chew a lot harder if it wants to swallow a complex temporal event like me. I've got plot armour."

**You did not just say that.**

"Yes and I do not have a giant carrot in my pocket," the Doctor in the bed next to Amy said and lo and behold he took out a giant carrot and started chewing on the top. Then he spat it out, threw it away and wiped his hand on his tweed jacket.

"I hate carrots."

"Then they yelled for me. The scientists, artists, inventors and mostly civilians had quietly and loudly discussed their current situation at length (in sometimes poetic fashion) but I can't remember for the life of me a word they said I hadn't already uttered. Life matters and all that; that about sums it up. But as for the quality of that life or its length...

Bernárd would have lived if I would have just put my hands up in the air and called it a day. We would've made fine pirates. We would've lived and more importantly the Earth would've lived. Scarred, but intact. Past, present and future saved.

But there was something in my gut just aching to get out. I wasn't done running and neither were they. I had a future (they all did) but to preserve it one boy would have his taken away...

The thought froze me so I had to block it out. I knew this boy would walk with me like a shadow: like a ghost that hadn't died yet or a memory that hadn't been lived yet. A constant reminder of a promise I couldn't keep.

IT WASN'T FAIR. But who says I had to be? My conscience objected. Fate told me I couldn't save Bernárd but that wouldn't stop my trying.

"Doctor, where are you?" It was your voice. It emanated somehow from within the box. _The shard of glass._ I rushed towards the box and the crowd of scientists parted to make way for me.

"Amy! Can you hear me?" I shouted at the box and even I started to suspect I might've lost my mind. And mind you, I've seen a lot of crazy things in my time. It's all relative.

I rattled the box and put my ear against it, like a seashell or a ticking timebomb.

"Doctor?" your voice seemed to come from a distance. "Are you here?"

And on the other end of the line it was your turn to think you had gone mad. Completely bonkers.

"I'm starting to hear voices," you said to yourself.

You couldn't have been more cautious. You suddenly found yourself alone at a party and the only one you know just left your sight, except instead of a party it was a spaceship and instead of guests there were prisoners.

You made a mistake and I was right: you were in danger. But you were lucky.

It was a simple ship you were on. No fancy gadgets or luxurious systems. Very spartan. It was a ship as dark as night or like an underground lake. Solid one moment and shapeless the next. You saw windows. Sometimes round and sometimes square. The exterior was pincers and skin of metal like sharp spines and bones and they seemed to move and grow.

Everything seemed to move and slither in the dark; it seemed to change and morph in the corner of your eyes. What you saw in there was part Guantanamo Bay, part H.R. Giger's worst nightmare, all hidden in the shadows.

Your instinct told you to hide. When you stepped out of the light of the dimensional hub you joined the ranks of the not-so-dead. They surrounded you, squirmed at your feet in pain, and you didn't raise your voice desperate to not let anyone know you were there.

You called for Jack when he didn't follow. You barely registered what had happened just now. You followed the shadows and they had lead you into the dark. You knew that going back did not guarantee a return to the same level. Basically, you were stuck.

"Amy! Can you hear me?"

The closer you got to the light the clearer you heard my voice. I didn't know. I couldn't see what you were doing and you had no idea what was going on. You were just trying to find me. And you didn't even know that this was what you were doing.

One of the figures on the floor grabbed your ankle. You shouldn't have yelled. They heard you. They now knew you were there.

Pale human hands wouldn't let go. Nails dug into your skin. In a panic you kicked him away.

Then another weak hand gripped your shin and you realized they were slowly waking up. Their featureless metal masks glistened in the light of the dimensional portal. Black as hardened lava rock.

At least you had the element of surprise there. All Jack had was his gun and his good looks. Oh, and his immortality. Somehow people keep forgetting that.

Although, he had another thing going for him, as he realized when the fireworks of the pirates' blasters went right through him. For a moment they thought he was a ghost.

"Is that how you treat an old friend?" Jack quipped easily. It's like he memorized 1950's sitcom punchlines. It's pathetic really, when you think of it.

**And "Who da Man?" wasn't?**

I am the man. A world of difference. Now...

A lot of things were going on at once. Subplots and not to mention the A-plot. Whatever happened to that? These things were happening on the ship and other things were happening on the Eiffel Tower.

Nothing was happening on Pluto, though. Its microbe inhabitants died out billions of years ago. The environment just wasn't right for it. Not much to adapt to.

But orbiting Pluto wasn't my choice. It was Nemo's. Everything boiled down to him.

Nemo had spent the last thirty-odd years or so living on Earth as a survivor of a crash landing in the Mediterranean and trapped like Jack on Earth, and it wasn't until time and space started spilling into each other through the rift that they both gained enough energy to use their time vortex manipulators.

Bernárd did as he was told. He was used to following orders; used to living in the shadow of a mighty engineer. I could tell he was still shaking as he stood by my side waiting to follow my lead. He seemed absent, jumpy, and I couldn't think of anything to say to him to calm his nerves.

All I could think of was his future murderer.

Now, if Nemo had been the one to have killed Bernárd he would've recognised him. He didn't. Or at least not yet. Maybe he will.

I was going to have to reverse-engineer this murder mystery and find the killer before he committed the crime. This was going to be a tricky one. And I love the tricky ones.

If Nemo had been the one who left the body of future Bernárd atop the tower in the past, why didn't he recognise him? No, he was simply reaping the fruits of a cataclysm he hadn't created yet. Which begged the question: where is the killer?

I don't know how this story managed to turn into an episode of Scooby Doo, but somehow you managed to find a clue and Jack managed to find the monster.

It's why the pirates weren't impressed by Jack's ghost routine. They were already used to multiple versions of the same person. Past, present and future doubles.

Nemo had them all locked away on that deck in metal masks to avoid them usurping his command. Oh, if only Voltaire was here to see this...

In the dark they were blindly grabbing for anything they could reach, anything that could remind them they were still alive...They were probably yelling inside those masks but no-one would ever hear them. Every single one of the Nemoes. Or is it Nemii?

So we had the murder victim and we have the murder weapon, but since the Nemo in command didn't recognise Bernárd, logically...

**He didn't kill him.**

Yet. But our suspect list just grew a lot longer. Any one of those Nemoes could be the ones to pull the trigger. Anyone with a time vortex manipulator...

Even the future Nemo could've been among them. Or else he had already escaped by leaping into the past. Now that is clever.

**What about Jack? He's got a time vortex manipulator...Did he do it?**

The Doctor looked into Amy's eyes.

"Spoilers..." he whispered.


	24. One Day

I haven't gone into detail about the pirates, have I? Good. They're basically just a ragtag band of post-Asian vagabonds orphaned by the Storm. Never a time when they aren't covered in dirt or mud or muck. Imagine a futuristic samurai all rusted and ancient with claws for hands and bronze eyepatches made of black glass...

You wouldn't want to mess with them. Or their ancient traditions. Which mostly consists nowadays of taking what's nearest and draining it for all its worth. Scavengers. Parasites. It's one way to live your life I suppose. The locust way. Using up all the resources and then leaping to the next victim.

Closest thing to a vampire if I've ever seen one. Anyway...

They were disgruntled at best when Jack found them. Drunk on victory: trying to hide the fact that they just traded one dark catacomb for another. They used to call this home once. What happened?

Jack was the first to recognise what was going on and mind you he's not one to pass up on such a good opportunity to inspire mutiny. But it wouldn't work. Their loyalty was unwavering to the point of delusion. It was almost blasphemous to think of overthrowing the captain. Nemo had trained them well.

"Who are you?" they asked him. The toothless man stepped forward once again and kicked over empty bottles in his stride.

"Nemo knows me."

"Don't use that word!" the tootless man spat from his mouth. They were restless.

"How did you get aboard this ship? Tell us now!"

"Or what?" Jack said. "You're gonna shoot me? Think it worked the first time? You're tenacious, I'll give you that."

For a split second the Rygellian man was confused by Jack's phrasing of words. The first time.

They were used to imprisoning past and future doubles of their captain on the lower decks, but whenever one of them died their memories died with them.

**Wait, they died?**

I'll get to that in a minute.

The toothless man was sure Jack couldn't remember. He watched him die. So the next word to come from his mouth couldn't possibly be what it was.

"Chon-pau."

Dead man. Jack smiled. "Take me to him. You know you want to."

If they had captured you, he'd meet you soon enough, but if they had killed you, there was nothing he could do about it. So either way all he could do now was buy time, for you, for me, for anyone, by distracting them with his good looks and charm and finding Nemo.

He gave himself up and handed them his firearm and let them lead him to where he wanted to go. It was only when he stepped out of the light that he could see where he was. It was a mess hall. Jack was starting to wonder whether there were any sort of creature comforts aboard this ship at all.

He snatched a drink off the table when he passed it by and threw the beverage down his throat. Being immortal still didn't make him any less nervous when facing such firepower. Especially realizing what's at stake. It made him laugh. He always laughs when he's nervous.

One of the pirates smiled at Jack for finishing the drink in one whole gulp and Jack winked at him before being pushed forward. Jack's like that. Just ignore him.

**Is he a real bloke or are you just making him up?**

Captain Jack's too big for fiction; especially for just one story.

**Is he bigger than you?**

Awkward. Moving on...

The last time the two Time Agents had met was, well, that same afternoon in the Parisian catacombs, but the last time before that was years ago. Perhaps centuries or millenia even.

And Jack had no idea why Nemo reacted so harshly to meeting him again.

The last thing he remembered was a mission they were both on. Nemo didn't say a word to him the entire time. What had happened? Why didn't he remember? It was a question he had once asked himself and after all those years he had yet to find an answer.

As he was being let into the next dark abode Jack was half expecting to find a pipe organ in Nemo's quarters, or a giant octopus. It did look to be the perfect place to brood and write poetry on the walls.

A single window looked out upon the edge of the solar system. Due to this dense darkness inside the ship the blackness of outer space was blindingly bright, like standing at the bottom of a well and looking up.

Jack thought the room was empty until he saw the man he was looking for standing in front of a mirror. He was shaving.

"You missed a spot," Jack said and he was immediately slapped by the toothless pirate.

Nemo raised a hand in objection. I wonder why.

"You," he spoke again and Jack panicked for a moment. Then he saw Nemo carried no weapon except for the straight razor he used for shaving. Jack swallowed.

"I didn't come to fight," Jack lied, although part of him wasn't. He was desperate for answers.

Nemo snapped his fingers and it seemed like the air itself started glowing, becoming warmer and warmer until the whole room lit up and the space outside that window turned dark again. It's all relative.

Then he ordered his underlings to leave them alone and with a flick of a switch on his vortex manipulator he made sure there was no escape.

"Your time vortex manipulator has been disabled," Nemo said, simply stating a fact.

Jack reached for his wrist. "How did you do that?"

Nemo didn't answer. Last time he saw him he used to sport this long, grey beard, but now there was just this cleanly shaven face with tired lines and old blue eyes.

"Have you come to die?" he asked.

"I can't die," Jack admitted.

"That's not what I asked."

With a twist of his wrist Nemo motioned forward and stabbed him in the gut with the razor. He held him in his arms for a moment to watch the life fade from his eyes and then he let go and Jack fell to the ground. Blood stained the pair of them and pooled around his body on the floor. It wasn't a pretty sight.

Five minutes later he woke up with the taste of blood still in his mouth and Nemo was standing over him whilst cleaning his hands with a bloodstained towel.

"Now you know I'm not lying," Jack said and Nemo nodded reluctantly.

"It seems we've both found ways of cheating death," he said.

That was one way of putting it. Another way would be to say he's butchered past lives to sustain his future. We all have memories, sometimes demons, sometimes ghosts from the past that haunt us metaphorically, sometimes literally (manifestations vary) and we all stuff away the things we don't want to remember in a place we hope to never find it again.

And there's no denying there's always things we don't want to remember. Things we can't change. We mourn but we don't look back. We live. I know it because I've lived it.

Call it repression, call it changing the past, but what Nemo has done (quite literally) was imprison his past away in the basement one version of himself at a time.

And not just past selves, he's taken over his future self as well, taken from them the things he hasn't got yet and then the question remains whether one day his past or future self will take it away from him causing an endless cycle of pain. The question is whether it's all part of history or a subversion of history. Is time being rewritten or is time being written?

Was I by saving the Eiffel Tower doing what I'm supposed to be doing or am I merely imposing my own view upon the Earth? Am I restoring THE status quo or am I restoring MY status quo?

I always talk about how history must not be altered: some events are fixed yet some things aren't. Why aren't the aliens fixed? Was Nemo _supposed_ to take the Eiffel Tower and I'm the one changing history or is it the other way around?

What could I do except do what I think is right by my conscience? _What else can I do?_

There I was, talking to myself like a madman, clinging on to hope and a tiny shard of a broken mirror in a box.

"Where are you, Amy?" I asked thin air. "How could I have heard your voice?"

I analyzed the box again with my sonic screwdriver and found something new and new's always good. A signal.

"Maybe it's Earth," Bernárd said. "You said this thing was connected to whatever's going on back on Earth. Maybe it's picking up signals from back home."

"Oh, you're clever," I said. "But I didn't say connected. I said this is what caused it. And the signal's not coming from Earth."

I jumped to my feet, startling those around me who watched my motions (but I grew less aware of them) and I aimed my screwdriver at the black and shapeless ship that hovered above us that entire time.

"It's coming from the ship," I concluded. "It's connected to the ship."

But I already knew that. Things were more complex than they seemed and there was a lot aboard that ship that I didn't know about.

I started pacing. I needed to work out what to do and I needed to work it out fast.

"My friend's in danger," I told Bernárd, because sometimes I just need a sounding board. At least that way my pacing doesn't scare people. I looked on my wrist watch for the time. There was little left. Nemo could be back any minute.

"She's on board that ship. I promised her I would keep her safe. I also promised you I would try to save you. Except I promised her first."

Some time, some place, you are screaming, and I can't always be there to help you. You can't always be lucky.

"You're leaving us?" Bernárd asked. The perfect soundbyte to make heads turn to see my reaction. I hate it when they do that, especially when I'm thinking.

"How am I supposed to leave you? Tell me!"

"There's no other way, Doctor," another said. I think it was Simon, finally daring to come out of hiding and about time as well.

"Don't tell me what I can't do! Tell me what I can do! Give me data! Give me everything you've got!"

How can I fly a spaceship with no engines? How can a piece of glass tear a hole in the fabric of time and space?

I got a sore neck looking up but someone had to. Then I snapped my fingers (several people sprang to attention and I don't know why) I pointed up and at the box. The two were one and the same.

"Amy's up there," I said. "Somehow. And there's a connection that allows me to hear her, so she must be near the source, so if she could just tell me it just might be our lucky day. Mind you this little box is probably going to be the death of us all. Miracles are always relative."

I cleared my throat and listened, hoping you were still out there somewhere, my lifeline in a cosmic game of Weekend Millionaire and I hoped you had the answers to my questions. To everyone's questions.

All these people were looking to me for answers and I didn't have any. Yet. Intelligence is relative as well. As for life...

I took the box away. To the untrained eye it was just a glass box with a piece of glass inside, but to me it was so much more. I could feel it glow in my hands. Radiation spilling out beyond the glass. It tickled my gums. What was it?

**But there's a future you out there somewhere, isn't there? Couldn't he just give you the answers? Save you a lot of bother.**

Yeah, but what would be the fun in that?

Time's complicated enough as it is without a second me running around: albeit with a very cool bowtie. So I enhanced the signal resonating from the box with a flick of the sonic and listened.

"Amy, can you hear me?" I said. "I need you to hear me."

I was in a dark place, Amy. We all were. In some ways more than others.

There was a question forming in Bernárd's mind which I had been preparing for; for which everyone was preparing for, really. He just hadn't said it yet. He just hadn't thought it yet.

"Is this it?"

Three words: barely words at all yet the damage they cause is unprecedented in the universe and only topped by three others: "What if?" and "Why?".

"Is this it?"

And my answer to him would've been this. _Look at where you are. Just look at the universe. It's everything. It's it!_

But what if one day that answer won't be enough. What do I say then?

**I'll never grow tired of the universe.**

Even if you'll lose your other leg?

**Doctor, why are you telling me this?**

Because I need you to remember. You're sad. Hold on to that feeling. Hold on to it as long as you possibly can.

**Why?**

What if?

"If you can hear me, Amy," I said. "...follow my voice...d'you remember that? Follow my voice..."

Then there was something else. Something new.

"Who is this?" it was a man's voice. It managed to catch me off-guard and left me scrambling for words.

"This is the Doctor. Who am I speaking to right now?"

There was no-one there to catch my panicked looks and perhaps that was for the best. Some of them were looking at old cooky me, the mad man with the box, talking to a box, oh, if only they knew...

"What? Did I misdial?" I asked. "Who is this? Wait, forget that, I'm looking for an Amy Pond, a girl with red hair and attitude, is she there? Can you hear me?"

There was something gravelly in his voice. Something sore, something odd and more importantly, something familiar but I couldn't place it in my mind. Skimming through memories would take far too long.

"Look, I need to know where you are! Can you hear me? Answer me!"

"You are too late," the voice on the other end of the line spoke. "The end is coming. For all of you."

To die means you have to be alive first. Death can be change. Endings can be beginnings.

"What does that mean: 'the end is coming'? Not even Nostradamus was that vague. The end of what?"

But all there was on the other end now was silence. Then footsteps.

Bernárd was finally catching up to what I was doing. "What's that sound?"

I had to shush him. This was too important.

Two more voices. Different voices. Where had the other man gone?

Nemo was dragging Jack down into the basement of his ship to show off his elaborate scheme. What's the point of devious plans if you can't brag about them to your old friends and foes?

"You don't remember, do you?" ("Nemo," I whispered when I recognised his voice.) "It's what they took from you, isn't it? Maybe they should've taken it all."

The metal floor at Jack's feet seemed to turn to liquid and wash away and the material reformed itself to make a giant winding staircase that seemed to move with them down into the next levels. The ship obeyed every one of Nemo's telepathic commands.

"You were a monster, Jack Harkness," Nemo said. "If that indeed is the name you go by now. It's disappointing, really."

"What do you know about me?" Jack asked.

"I know about the five years that were stolen from your memory. I stopped them before they could take mine as well."

"So, you remember?" Jack said.

"I remember everything. Your immortality is your curse and you deserve every second of it," Nemo spoke. "But you are not alone."

When the lights revealed Nemo's dirty little secret Jack froze. I would've done the same.

'My God, what have you done?" he gasped, looking down on all the temporal doubles lying in shackles from one end of the floor to the other.

"Kill me and two will take my place. I am Hydra. Scattered across time and space. I am immortal."

"But this is a paradox. You're changing your own past. How is this possible?"

"My past is fluid. Time is not fixed," Nemo said and he looked up. "Stories can be rewritten."

Jack followed his gaze up at the hundreds of objects that suddenly lit up across the ceiling, like a thousand mourning candles burning for the fate of their living counterparts below.

Without warning, Nemo punched him down to the ground and the prisoners scattered upon hearing their conquerer's booming voice. Now he walked among his own, circling Jack with another fist ready to pummel his enemy into the dust.

"This is your punishment, Captain Jack Harkness," Nemo said. "For all the horrors that you committed. For all the civilizations you burned..."

"But I don't remember doing it!" Jack yelled back from the dust.

"Yet they still burn. Forever. Because of you."

"But I'm not immortal, am I?" Jack said. "It's not cheating death if you still get to die."

"Everybody dies," Nemo spoke.

Then suddenly their eyes turned to the very same thing. People keep on missing the obvious. In a room occupied by a hundred identical men you'd think the one ginger girl would get all of the attention.

Yes. It was you. They found you lying on the floor to the side of the place where Nemo was standing (just in the corner of his eyes) wearing the same black metal mask all of the prisoners were wearing.

Jack scrambled to crawl towards you until a sudden blast hit Nemo square in the chest. He turned and managed to look at Jack one last time before he imparted his final breath that moved the dust.

From the shadows the new captain emerged. A younger Nemo who swapped places with you, Amy, and he was no longer a prisoner.

"It's over. It's time to start anew," he said and he aimed his blaster at Jack.

So Jack grabbed you and jumped out the window. Which is easier said than done.


	25. Whisper in a Dead Man's Ear

Damn, I just killed off Nemo, didn't I? Oh, well. I'll work around it.

Times like these when he's being sucked out into space without a suit make Jack wish he was dead. Really. But he wasn't going to be for another two minutes. He had ten seconds to take measures to save his life but it wasn't going to be enough. Soon his moisture would evaporate, his eyes would burn and he'd go blind, his blood would boil and his brain would die. No-one had ever survived more than ninety seconds of exposure to the cold vacuum of outer space and he would've been forced to survive it again and again and again."

**"I really don't like this story."**

"Don't worry, it'll grow on you." the Doctor said and put his hand on Amy's leg. "Literally."

The Doctor's smile grew until it reached from ear to ear. "Haaa-!"

Amy groaned and shook her head.

"How long have you been waiting to say that?"

"Ages!" He removed his hand from Amy's leg and continued the story.

"Now, the trick to surviving continued exposure to the vacuum of outer space is simple. You don't. Humans just don't have the parts to survive in outer space. You've adapted to oxygen and pressure and gravity and clothing and jelly babies, but when it comes to the vacuum of space the human body is helpless; a fish out of water.

And I don't know why people always refer to the universe as an ocean. It's nothing like it. And who's _people_ anyway? Never mind.

The last thing Jack remembered before passing out was feeling your hand within his as you were both shot into space. Then there was a sudden tug and he let go. You were gone and Jack was spinning into outer space while his skin was turning blue and his consciousness was fading away.

Then he died. Seconds away from the Eiffel Tower's oxygen bubble.

He probably made the mistake of breathing in instead of breathing out. A rookie mistake. _The universe isn't an ocean!_

Yes, Jack died. And Nemo died. Except they didn't.

For every second of your life there is a you. From a physical viewpoint, the cells of your human body are constantly regenerating. Your entire human skeleton is replaced every ten years. So, literally, in ten, maybe fifteen years time the old Amy will be dead and gone and the new Amy will live on.

Now enter time travel. Where things get even more complicated.

**I'm with you so far.**

From a non-linear non-subjective viewpoint there is a different version of you every single second. We could go back a half an hour ago right now and meet you from half an hour ago. A temporal double of you, Amy Pond. A different you. An alternative you relative to you you.

**But wouldn't that be a paradox?**

Exactly.

With every passing second you become an amalgamation of all these people, all these Amy's, these people who are left behind. Except they don't die. They evolve. These people live to become you. You're them. You're their legacy.

There were ancient cultures on Earth that thought taking pictures of people captured their souls, their essence, and even stole them from them. A single picture, a person frozen in time, captured within a single flash of light. They weren't wrong.

Of course, that doesn't mean they're right. A picture is just light. Nothing more. But when you consider shadows aren't always shadows, maybe light isn't always light. Who knows what's hiding in plain sight? Stealing souls, stealing voices, stealing moments...

Because that's what Nemo did. He's stolen all those moments from his own life and ripped them out of context and out of the proper place in his life. His life should've crumbled like a house of cards, except it didn't. Time had been rewritten yet the story is unchanged.

Of course, who said he had any choice?

We assume time to be rewritten, yet for all we know it could've been just that...written. And Nemo spent his entire life a prisoner of fate. Bernárd could sympathize, even if he had only lived it a single day.

But I'm a Time Lord. I can feel time, smell it, it's my instinct, my heritage, my blood...

Something was wrong. This wasn't supposed to happen. Every time I looked up I could just see the air buzzing with electricity, laden with wrongness, and it was practically oozing out of the glass box in my hands.

Then a man suddenly dropped from the sky and events accelerated. People started rushing towards the edge to see what had just passed them by, but judging by the things I had just overheard via the mysterious shard of glass I had a good feeling on who it was going to be.

And also you can just tell it's Jack by his dramatic entrances.

**Oh, you're one to talk! I seem to remember a certain someone crashing into my garden and destroying my shed! My bicycle was in there!**

I love bicycles. They're cool.

But which version of Jack was it going to be? How could I know? Was it going to be conman Jack? Time Agent Jack? World War II Jack? Torchwood Jack? Headphone Jack?

21st Century Jack? 22nd Century Jack? Depressed Jack? Jolly Jack? Camp Jack?

Decapitated Jack?

I'm making it sound like a series of action figures. But there was only one way to find out which one I'd meet next. I had to be careful. Jack's immortality makes him a fixed point in time and space which meant he'd remember everything I would tell him. And a single word could change the course of history. _My history._

**Your past. You've met him before. He is real.**

Very. He's not the only real person, though. If you remember the Rat Pack.

It wasn't all panic and gloom aboard the Eiffel Tower. There was 'cool', too. I've got to give a tip of the hat to Buffalo Bill there, literally. When all was quiet you could always expect to still hear him chewing tabacco somewhere in the background and gripping his belt.

I hate to confirm stereotypes but he wás the original cowboy. He practically invented the stereotypes of the American wild west in his Wild West show.

He was the first to see the army-coated blur drop down the side of the Eiffel Tower and then suddenly drop up again.

At the whim of articifial gravity Jack kept falling up and down one some invisible trampoline until gravity pulled him in. He fell right atop the ledge with a bonecrunching snap. Three volunteers grabbed him when they caught him almost falling over. They pulled his body in.

Bill checked his pulse. Nikola stepped away from the dead body the moment he was declared dead.

"Everyone stand back!" I told them. Oh, I couldn't wait to see the looks on their faces. But there was more important things to worry about first.

He was on that ship. Nemo was dead. Someone else had taken his place. And I didn't know about the temporal doubles then. No, Jack was about to fill me in on that...

He woke up screaming and he clung to the first person within reach.

"Amy...!"

"It's okay...You're all right."

The arm he was leaning on was the arm of the best sharpshooter in the world. Buffalo Bill's right hand man, which was a woman. Annie Oakley. All he needed was a female touch. Oh, that sounded sexist.

**Just get on with it, Doctor.**

It's political correctness gone mad!

"But he was dead!" Bill cried out and spat a drop of tabacco on the floor. And Nikola again backed away. With Bill's rough edges and Nikola's neurotic cleanliness it was like watching the odd couple. Ever seen that movie? It's brilliant. Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau...Where was I?

"Who are you people?" Jack asked, rising from the dead. Death seemed to have scrambled his brain. Then he remembered.

Buffalo Bill then drew his weapon and pointed it at the Captain and at that point I really had to step in.

I really shouldn't call him Buffalo Bill though. That was just a nickname. He was Cody, William Cody.

"No guns! I hate guns!" I told the most famous gunslinger as I ran in front of him.

I almost gave myself away. I slapped my hands in front of my mouth and looked to see whether Jack had paid attention. His scrambled brain worked in my favour. Lucky, lucky, lucky!

"Right!" I said, trying to keep the peace. "A man falls from the sky and I know how that might seem weird, but it's perfectly acceptable in certain parts of the galaxy... where gravity is not a luxury..."

"Doctor, we're in deep space," Bill said. Or Cody. Buffalo Bill Cody.

"Doctor?" Jack asked. I had to step in again before I could let that seed of a thought grow into an idea.

I couldn't let him know. There was too much at stake. Too much this young Jack couldn't know yet and I couldn't let him ask, or guess.

"Doctor Rory Williams!" I introduced myself and shook his hand rather wildly. "We're all doctors here!"

**Who?**

Just a name...An old friend of mine. Ever heard of him?

**No...You've never mentioned him before.**

He was human. And to fool Jack that was what I had to be more like. I had to blend in.

**Rory, Jack, River...Any more old friends I should know of?**

Past, present, future friends...Haven't you been listening to anything I said?

But I've also got enemies.

**Like Nemo.**

I was going to say the Daleks or Cybermen, but sure, he might qualify. But sometimes the world just isn't black or white. It's sort of...mauve.

Jack knew. He just found out moments ago he was a mass-murderer.

I mean, Nemo didn't exactly use those words, but when the most notorious and vicious Time Agent of them all calls you a monster you might just want to re-evaluate yourself.

Maybe do some running. That always works for me.

"Where's the Doctor?" was the first thing Jack asked when he got up. He was all business, which meant his defence mechanism kicked in. He didn't even try to flirt this time.

**Did you want him to flirt?**

No, but sometimes I just get nostalgic.

"We're all doctors here!" I said. "At least some of us are, but we're all peaceful here!"

I awkwardly pushed Bill's hand down until his gun aimed at the floor. Then I rubbed my hands together.

"You came from that ship, didn't you?" I asked and Jack nodded. Oh, I was good. But I already knew that. I needed more.

I noticed Jack was trembling. He wasn't just shaken, he was visibly exhausted too, like he had just woken up from a very long nightmare.

"I teleported aboard," Jack explained as he was helped up, groaning in between breaths. "Teleport, it's like, technology which I can't explain right now. I was sent here to help you. All of you. But they told me the Doctor was here. And if the Doctor is here, he would know what to do!"

Oh, if only they weren't all looking at me.

"What the hell is that?" Jack's attention was luckily swiftly drawn away toward the mysterious glass box which somehow worked as both a power source and a communicator AND would be responsible for erasing the Earth from history and I still had no idea how.

Then: EUREKA!

"I've seen these before," Jack said. "There were thousands of them all over the ceiling, like lights."

"Of course!" I cried out involuntarily and I restrained myself too late. Jack's eye was already on me. "I mean...that makes sense...we already suspected there was some kind of connection between this thing and the ship..."

"We?" Jack asked.

"We're scientists, us," I said and I put an arm around Buffalo Bill. Then I let him go and put an arm around Nikola and Bernárd. "We're the Majestic Twelve!"

"Why do I know that name?"

"I just invented it," I lied.

Originally they were a secret committee of scientists in the 1940's investigating the Roswell incident. The term's actually inaccurate, because I was the thirteenth member. I'm like D'Artagnan in 'The Three Musketeers'.

"_Majestic_?" Jack asked.

"Twelve scientists," I said. "...faced with the majesty of the universe. That's what Claude said, _didn't you Claude_?"

Claude Debussy had no idea what I was talking about. Maybe he'd write a composition of this one day. I hope it isn't 'La Mer'.

"...oh, this is fantastic," I said, looking down at the box.

"My friend is still up there," Jack said. My excitement turned to terror. "Amy. I need to get back up there but Nemo's done something to my vortex manipulator! He's jamming it somehow. I can't get it to work!"

My sonic screwdriver was aching inside my pocket. I could fix it but not yet.

"He had dozens or maybe hundreds of temporal doubles," Jack said.

"Who?" I asked, knowingly.

"Nemo. He had something that overrided the paradox. I think it's this..."

"What's he talking about?" Annie Oakley asked and Bill put an arm on her shoulder to console her. Not everyone likes technobabble.

**I do. Tell me more.**

Well, I'm not going to. First there's something else I have to tell you about. The Pirate and the Princess. Now there's a good name for a story. Or what about this: The Paradox Glass. Perfect chapter title. You may want to remember that for your children's stories.

**This isn't a children's story, Doctor. People die.**

People always die. Don't you think children know that? Treat them like children. Don't treat them like idiots.

**Like you treat us, Doctor? You're so old, Doctor. We all must seem like children to you.**

Some day we'll all seem like children to Jack, but not that day. There are times I get tired of always being the oldest in the room. All those references that no-one ever seems to get.

**But I've seen "The Odd Couple". It was good.**

Finally! We *have* a winner! At least we have something in common. That's good. That's very good.

But on board Nemo's ship you had much more in common with Nemo than with me. So much in fact that your minds were starting to get in sync. Remember when I said the ship was mildly telepathic? That wasn't just a throwaway line. Always pay attention, Amy Pond.

**What? What did I miss?**

The most important bit of the story. The motivation!

Nemo's world was governed by only one single rule and that was survival of the fittest. Herbert Spencer coined that term.

However, Nemo did not live every aspect of his life by that rule. And that is ironic because in fact it did involve killing multiple versions of himself over and over again.

There was to be only one Captain at a time to steer_ the Khamorath_. His ship. The prisoners he had on his deck were not there by accident. They were mutineers. All of them had at some point tried to kill him and take over the ship.

Killing them meant risking a total event collapse. A paradox. Most of them were half his age. Killing any of his younger self meant risking the taking his own life.

So he imprisoned them. Something a lot less definitive. Letting them live meant allowing for an opening in time and the possibility that the timeline could be restored. No paradoxes and therefore no end of the universe shenanigans.

The new Captain marched with his new conquest to the upper levels. He held his own temporal double's decapitated head under his arm as proof of his triumph and a reminder of their oaths to him. Those were the rules of the game.

After telling them to dispose of the body Nemo let himself be informed of the new situation he was oblivious to. He had seen telepathic glimpses, felt emotions and saw images. For years he had been stuck in this emotional rollercoaster beamed directly into his mind. It would take him some time to readjust to reality, but there was one thing he knew to be true and to be real in reality: the redhaired girl in the lower decks who he had tricked into wearing the mask for him.

You.

He had caught you and pressed the mask against your face. I misspoke before. It wasn't you who had been tricked, it was the mask itself. The metal attached itself to your skin and engulfed your head entirely, causing Nemo to be freed. It was switched from one person to the next.

When his pirates told him of what had happened they said there would be more like her, and something about a skeleton. And prisoners.

"Terminate the prisoners," Nemo spoke carelessly. Words came to him out of nowhere. He'd almost forgotten what it was like to have memories of his own.

"I'm plotting a course back to Orcus. I'm the Captain now."

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," suddenly a voice resounded all over the ship.

Then Nemo saw a skinny man with long, black and quite excellent hair in a tweed jacket and a bow tie standing at the centre of a dimensional hub like a ghost in top light.

Me.

"Remember me?" I said. I knew he wouldn't. That Nemo was dead.

Most of his pirate minions had scattered all over the place to do their new master's bidding, but those that remained were left flabbergasted by the next intruder of their ship.

"Who are you?"

Oh, I love it when they say that.

"Take a guess," I said. Then I vanished.

"Find him!" Nemo yelled. This younger version of him was much more violent than the former, but I guess that's what being imprisoned what might be many years does to a person, although it never happened to me.

Of course, it's hard being the new Captain. New responsibilities and all. He thought the worst was all behind him but he was so wrong. It was only just beginning.

"You know where I am," I teased and again my voice resounded across the ship. Its acoustics were terrific. "You know who I am. _Who_ I am."

"Take the ship out of orbit!" Nemo bellowed at his henchmen and he rushed downstairs where I was waiting for him. The place all of his followers knew of but where none of them were allowed to look. On penalty of death.

I fixed the signal of the next dimensional hub so that the light would shine brighter around me.

I turned down the volume as he approached. I wanted him to see my face.

"But you have no idea, do you?" I said as Nemo slowly descended the staircase. "You're like a newborn hatchling. Fresh out of the egg. You've fought for this. I know you have. So I'm going to apologize in advance for what I'm going to do. I'm very sorry."

"And what's that then?" Nemo asked and I had perfect calm.

"I'm going to stop you."

"Then what is it I'm doing?" this Nemo asked as he stepped across the deck just out of reach of his jealous rivals. And one sleeping beauty.

"Now, _you're going to have to listen_," I said. "You're left with your predecessor's mess with no idea how to handle the new situation. Aren't you curious why he brought you here? Why you're dragging some tower across space carrying prisoners? Kidnapping _ginger girls_? Girls that never _listen_? I can tell you."

"My predecessor was me," Nemo said. "I don't need you to tell me about myself!"

"_Can you hear me?_" I spoke with a set jaw. And you slowly woke up.

"You weren't him. You and him have everything in common, except one thing," I said. "Memories. It's what separates you from him, from all of them. And I've worked it out. I know everything, except one little thing. One tiny thing.

"I know this ship is alive. And it's unique. Nothing like it in the whole universe. And it's more than just a ship to you. There's the woman who married the Eiffel Tower and then there's you. You would stand up for this ship. _You would make a stand_."

And you stood up slowly, carrying the weight of the mask on your head while Nemo listened on.

"There is a connection between me and this ship. Every time I lose it I come back for it. I must have it," Nemo spoke with a haunted voice of a man who knows his flaws and obsessions.

Admitting it is the first step.

"I know what that's like," I told him. "But to kill your past and future selves to get it back? Changing the course of time to your greed? What kind of a life is that? What kind of a life are you making for yourself? Why don't you just _turn left_ (no, the other left!) and do your best to change it?"

You shuffled your feet to face left.

"Who are you?" Nemo asked.

"_Stop!" _I shouted, before regaining my composure.

Nemo was starting to get agitated, looking for ways to trap me on his ship.__

"I care," I said. "And so did your predecessor. Your ship died, Nemo. The humans found its wreckage. One of them turned its remains into a magnificent tower and he (you!) stole it to give it a proper burial. I get that. It's your ship. That tower and this ship are one and the same. The same object in two different points of its own timeline. Like yourself._  
_

"And there's people aboard that tower, Captain. Good people! People who are missing from their own original place in history where they belong!"

"I don't care."

"Exactly!" I said. "Yet your predecessor did. In his own twisted way. He gave those people an option. He offered them servitude aboard this ship or death. To him, death was a mercy. I mean, have you seen this place? Look at them suffering! He let it happen! You let it happen! And he knew he was going to pay the price one day and he did. You all are.

"But what about you?" I said. "What kind of person are you? He imprisoned you. What makes you any worse than him?"

"You want us to share?" Nemo said. "No. There can be only one Captain."

"If you didn't go back in time there wouldn't be any more Captains! This is all your own doing. You can't go back and change time. You mourn and you live. I know because I did it! _And I'm looking right at you!_ _So walk towards me! Reach out to me!_ Time can be rewritten! You can change the future; change the past!"

"It's too late for that, Doctor," Nemo said. "We are one. We are Nemo."

One but no one. A paradox.

"What about the Paradox Glass?" I asked and caught Nemo off guard. "Those boxes in the ceiling. They are allowing this to happen, aren't they? Their energy is spilling out all over this ship. Their radiation is allowing this perversion of timelines to exist. How is that even possible? What's sustaining it? What is it?"

"No one knows," Nemo said.

"That isn't helping!" I said and Nemo laughed. He was telling the truth. He didn't know. Not really.

"I will live my life, with my ship, in whatever way I want it. I will not let you tell me what to do. It is mine. Forever."

"Then I have one thing to say to you," I concluded. "Just one."

Nemo reached for the blaster on his hip.

_"AMY RUN!"_

I stretched out my arms and you, Amy Pond (oh, you clever girl!), ran straight into them!

One moment we were standing aboard _the Khamorath_ and the next we were aboard the Eiffel Tower. Inside the dimensional hub we were in both places at once.

I forgot to mention that the dimensional hubs the pirates so conveniently used to walk from one deck to the next weren't part of the ship but part of the paradox. They were sustained by the mysterious boxes and the glass it contained inside and because I had access to one of them I had access to them all. Like Nemo, like the Tower and the ship, all the boxes were one and the same.

That might've been the reason why the paradox energy is so much stronger and condensed on that deck. Being in the presence of your own temporal doubles is creating so much temporal energy and that combined with the mysterious energy from the glass is sustaining the paradox and might be the cause of what is happening on Earth.

I cut the link, the box died again and the metal cord which connected your metal mask to Nemo's ship was cut as well when the portal closed.

"I've got her!" I said laughing as I held her in my hands, back and still aboard the Eiffel Tower and Jack hugged her as well.

"I love it when a plan comes together!"

Now all we had to do is find a way to get that mask off her face and repel an onslaught of pirates coming to execute us. All in a day's work!


	26. Stuck in the Middle with You

Breathing. We all do it. Us humanoids at least. At least most of the time. Humans breathe, Timelords breathe, often, but how do living spaceships breathe? And more importantly, how did you breathe (or eat for that matter)?

The metal mask covered your entire face. There were no apparant holes in it. No hinges. It was like it was superglued on and you couldn't even speak underneath it. The metal had entered your mouth and nostrils, perhaps even glued itself to your eyes, and I think it fed you. Like how a tree converts carbon dioxide into oxygen, and very much like a tree the metal mask too was alive.

And maybe that's how the ship sustained itself: through photosynthesis, like a big, giant metal tree in a symbiotic relationship with its passengers. You've got to admire that. And the mask makes it sort of official.

It takes away your individuality and literally hooks you up to the ship. Connected telepathically. Yet outside the reach of the ship the mask still lived! Was it really an extention of the ship or could it be that it was a self-contained lifeform in itself? It's really quite extraordinary when you think about it.

I was sweating, my knees buckled under the added weight of one newly arrived Amy Pond and I held you as the Eiffel Tower held me. I wonder how much more it could take until it buckled? The Eiffel Tower wasn't made to last in outer space. We were bound to the floor. You were ecstatic and feeling all over my face and tweed jacket as if you were trying to read brutish braille.

"I've got you, Amy!" I said. "I won't let go! You're safe here!"

I lied of course. We weren't safe here. We weren't safe at all.

Our troubles weren't half over, yet they could've ended any minute with our painful deaths.

"Get it off her!" Jack strained and he tried to bury his fingernails underneath the nonexistent edge of the mask. Even sonicking it wouldn't do the trick.

Nothing seemed to affect the metal until I briefly brushed its surface with my cheek and it exploded into being. The metal snapped at my face in the form of liquid snakes intended to latch on to my face. The people who had rushed to her aid quickly fell back in fear.

The mask was intended to be worn, designed to be worn, and it would only accept another face. I wonder if it cared which.

"Everyone stand back!" I said. What else was I going to say? 'Dig in?'

"Doctor, is it really you?" Jack asked. "But how is that even possible?"

I'd almost forgotten he was there. I didn't want to deal with him just yet.

"Would you believe me if I said I had no idea what you're talking about?" I said, because I really didn't have the time for this. Too much was at stake. We were in a tricky situation. Time was the one thing we didn't have!

"But it's you!" Jack said. "It has to be! I know you, Doctor. Only you're that bold..."

He had a crush on me, you know. As I looked into 1889 Jack's eyes I couldn't help but note the irony in his words. I'm not really that brave. He didn't know me as well as he thought. Time was the great gap that separated us but I like to still call him a friend.

My mind was running like a steam-engine out of control. Too much chatter, too much noise, too much possibilities, like balancing a tightrope while juggling burning chainsaws pondering whether you left the kettle on.

There were men coming in to kill us, there was a mask smothering you and a past companion desperate for answers he can't have and a young boy destined to die if I even think about trying to change events back...or forward.

But it was too late! Things had already been changed and already been set in motion. And I couldn't stop it. I can't fight time.

Not on my own.

"Who are you, Doctor?" Tesla asked me. "Who is that man who fell from the sky? And who is she?"

"They're with me," I said. "They're-"

"They're his companions," a voice suddenly said beyond Annie Oakley, the cowboy and the silent Sioux. Something that had been boiling for some time could boil no more.

The Flemish man spoke as he trembled before me: "The Doctor will always need a companion. A henchmen. A partner in crime. Someone to die for his cause. Someone to do the dirty work for him. It's in his file! It's all over history, for crying out loud, but people just don't want to see it!"

Simon de Leeuw finally dared to step forward. I've been waiting for him to say something. Maybe I should've nodded or waved. What do humans do in that sort of situations where you recognise an acquaintance? Kiss?

"I wasn't wrong, was I? When I said you'd bring death and destruction in your wake?"

"Oh, come on," I said. "Grow up, Simon..."

"He's an alien, I tell you! A man from another planet! He's going to be the death of us all!"

Tesla backed slightly away from me. His very instinct and mysophobia had turned on me, considering me to be one giant germ. An alien element in a human environment. Except this time, it was the other way around. The human race was out of its element and stranded helpless in an alien environment. Technically, they were the aliens, the invaders, the germs. And this was my world.

"Doctor, is this true?" Tesla asked.

"Look around you, Nikola," I said. "What'd you think? Yes, I'm from another planet! It doesn't have to be such a big deal. Not yet anyway."

"But he looks human!" someone else shouted and I couldn't tell who it was.

"Nothing is what it seems," I said. I even impressed myself with that bumpersticker, but there was little time for me to enjoy it when seven times a blinding flash transported a Rygellian pirate in our midst.

They charged their weapons, growling, one at a time and when the last surge of lightning brought the last pirate down from the ship Jack raised a hidden weapon at the pirates.

I had to stop them. I had to yell.

"NOO!"

This was a massacre in the making and I was the only one who could stop it. "Wait!"

Jack didn't fire first, oh thank goodness, he didn't fire first. Then all hell would've broken loose.

The hostages had rounded themselves up before any pirate made any noise. I saw the black leather bands around their wrists and I had to move fast.

"Look at me!" I yelled and I aimed the sonic at the ship above and closed my eyes. If it hadn't worked I would've been shot then and there and this story would've ended very quickly. I closed my eyes and made a wish.

I turned the problem into part of the solution and sent the pirates back from where they came with a flick of a switch! Seven more flashes and then silence. You should've seen it.

"It worked!" I shouted. Because I'm brilliant, let's face it.

"Remember me?" I told Jack, because what's the point of being clever if you can't get to brag about it? "Good with teleports!"

"You really are the Doctor," Jack said. "Ow!"

You pinched him.

"There are times I really love being me," I said.

"Me too," Jack said with a smile aimed solely at me, which I admit was slightly awkward. So I addressed the crowd as a whole from then on. It would help them learn to trust me. From now on they had to. I was the only one that could get them out of here alive.

"They've all got the same time vortex manipulator! Same wavelength! Same feed!" I explained. "Stolen from Nemo's temporal counterparts and so reversing the feed is really child's play! Oh, I love child's play! Now...I can only keep the feed reversed for so long until they find a way to work around it. So what I need is suggestions. ANYONE?"

"The TARDIS, Doctor!" Jack said and I could see you balling your fists already. "Can't we use it to get out of here?"

"It's not here. It's back on Earth," I pointed out, bursting Jack's bubble, but then I already knew exactly what it would take to get these people home. Simon de Leeuw was right. If I did this, I would lead them all to their deaths. One way or another.

"We need to level the playing field," Buffalo Bill spoke. "We have to think strategy. Find cover. Find some way to use the weakness of these killers to our advantage."

"They have blasters, Doctor," Jack said. "We've got sticks and stones. If it comes down to a fight we won't win."

"We don't have to fight," I said. "Not really. Of course, if they decide to just suck all the oxygen out of the bubble we're done for anyway. But I can get us out of this!"

"Bubble?"

And I couldn't stop staring at the mysterious glass box at Jack's feet. The end of the human race came in the littlest package...

"I just need more time!"

"If you need time, Doctor," Bill spoke and he brought in his own companions, Annie Oakley the best marksman in the world and the silent Sioux Native American at his other side, Sitting Bull. "we can buy you some time. All you need to do is say the word."

"Excellent," I said and Bill loaded his rifle which I then tried my best to ignore.

Top hats were scattered all over the floor and no-one knew anymore to whom anyone of them belonged. Jack caught you standing with your foot hooked in one and trying desperately to shake it off.

"Hey," he whispered to you. "Listen to me, okay..."

You squeezed his hand.

"The Doctor's going to fix everything. He always does. He'll find a way to get this mask off your face. You just have to hang on a little longer, okay? You just have to endure a little more..." he said.

"...maybe even twenty years more..." he added under his breath.

The grip on Jack's hand lessened. And I talk too much. I should've seen it, but I was distracted and under a heck of a lot of pressure, but I still should've seen it. The connection.

This had happened before. You thought you were dreaming. Except you weren't. Someone else was. The wire had been cut but the connection still existed.

"Doctor," Bernárd asked but I cut him off with a snap of my finger.

"Don't interrupt me! I'm thinking!"

I had been counting down since the beginning. How much oxygen did we have left? How much time? How many people? Roughly 986 feet and 10,282 square meters makes 409 times 409 times 886 equals 164939066 cubic metres which makes for 164939066000 litres of oxygen plus leg room, but minus the matter -9,441 tons of it- and the people and 1,671 steps to the top...

And humans breathe 550 liters of pure oxygen on an average day when not excited or under extreme pressure. Anxiety takes a toll on a man. 550 times 50 and add to that the hole Jack probably made on his way into the bubble...

I don't know, I might've made a mistake back there you may want to check but the point still stands!

Oxygen is leaking into space. Killing us slowly. It was only a matter of days. Except the Earth didn't have another hour, let alone a few days, but who makes the time? Do I or does fate? This was one date with destiny I was desperate to avoid. Postpone at best. But if we stayed in the present any longer we'd be sitting ducks.

But Nemo wasn't just going to watch us die; not now I practically challenged him to his face, and with that I bought us some extra time.

"I might've bought us an extra five minutes until Nemo figures out how to work around the teleportation feed. Then we're dead," I said out loud.

"Then tell us what to do, Doctor," Jack insisted. But was I really the one to give orders? I was tired of giving orders. Tired of seeing my best friends turn into soldiers. Qere they really my best friends? I don't know sometimes.

Someone once told me I'm dangerous. And people tell me I'm dangerous lots of times, but this one was different. This one hurt. He said I make people a danger to themselves by trying to impress me. And they don't even know my name.

"Everybody get in the lift!" I finally said. "We're going up! Jack, take Amy. Nikola, come with me We've got work to do."

I saw Simon de Leeuw reluctantly accept his fate that now rested in my hands. Good for him.

"What do you want to do with this, Doctor?" Bernárd asked and when I turned I saw him holding the glass box. The thing to end all things. Whatever those things may be.

He was practically holding his own murder weapon. Not the actual blaster that would eventually kill him, but the item that lead to the event in question. And he was only trying to help.

"Give it to me, Bernárd," I asked gently, reaching out a hand. "Don't drop it. Let me hold it for a while."

Here aboard the Eiffel Tower suddenly the memory of the young boy's body struck me as very tangible, very possible, downright inevitable, yet the present disagreed vehemently with that notion. He was standing alive in front of me.

"Remember what I said," I told him. "Stay close."

He nodded. I needed him to remind me. I mustn't forget him. You know how easily distracted I get.

I needed to remember. There are so many of them lost forever. So many nameless stars that only exist in my memory. They live through me in many ways. The people time forgot.

We must remember.

"Allons-y!" I told the young boy (he probably thought I was speaking Occitan) and lead him to the lift with a pat on the shoulder while Jack watched.

"DOCTOR!" Jack yelled for my attention and I rushed to him. "It's Amy!"

Something was wrong with you. Your hands were cold.

"She's not responding," Jack said.

"What about the mask? Is it still responding?"

"Responding to what?"

No time to play nice, so I pressed my hand down on the metal mask and it was like digging your hand in wet sand at the beach. The water would billow up as I pushed down and the metal formed a cast around my hand. I almost couldn't even let go.

"It's still alive," I said. "Proximity to the ship is what's keeping it alive!"

"It's telepathic?" Jack asked.

"Oh, it's wireless!" I said.

"I could put some distance between us. I could teleport her to safety. But Nemo de-activated my time vortex manipulator."

"Yes, I know, I know...you want me to re-activate it and I could...I could..."

"Doctor?"

"I COULD!" I cried out and jumped up. "Oh! But that's it! I could! We could re-activate the engine! Bring back the dead!"

"Doctor!"

"Not now, Amy, I'm busy!"

"Doctor, you have to listen!"

It was your voice. You were back and gripping Jack's arm with a vengeance. But your face...

Somehow, the living metal had warped itself to become a pristine presentation of your facial features, constantly morphing and changing like ripples in a clear black oil lake.

"Something's coming," you said out of the dark. "Something's been released. I don't know what, but it's bad."

"Isn't it always?" Jack said.

"It's coming for you, Doctor," you said. "It's coming here."

Then something crashed on the far end of the platform, crushing the metal, something that had been shot down like a torpedo from the ship above.

"Is it here?" you said. "I can't see. Is it here?"

It was like a blob, like shapeless clay, sticking to the floor, then another crashed down right beside it. And another.

"Do you know what it is?" you asked.

"As a matter of fact, I do," I said and a shiver ran down my spine. "It's plan B."

"Doctor?" Jack said.

"Oh, I agree," I replied. "Run."

We ran towards the lifts carrying you in between us. When we looked over our shoulders we saw the blobs of metal slowly coming alive. Humanoid shapes were emerging from their own wreckage. Something featureless with claws starting running at us with the speed of something that had just been shot out of a barrel.

"Close the door! Close the door!" Jack yelled at the lift operators. It had been a few turbulent hours since they'd actually done their jobs. I sonicked the controls to help them along and the lift rattled back to life.

The creature roared. It sounded like something a garbage disposer would grind if it had a larynx.

"What the hell was that?"

"Where are the others?" Jack asked Bernárd while the lift moved up and the creature assaulted the doors. We backed up to the other side. There might've been over twenty people crammed into these four metal walls. We were rising out of its reach.

"They're already up. There's four lifts..."

"Yes!" I said. "Two designed by the brilliant Otis from America and the others by some clumsy Frenchmen. Which are we in?"

I could tell Bernárd treasured that bit of trivia. He was proud to be able to cite some of the achievements of the man he called his father. Some of which he even had the slightest hand in himself. But there wasn't time!

The lift violently shook and stalled. The creature was ripping apart the fence that stood in its way in order to attack the bottom.

The people in the lift screamed as something heavy suddenly started pulling it down.

And you were gone again: fading in and out of consciousness. You fell to your knees in the shaking lift as twenty people made room for you to fall flat on your face. When we turned you over you were unconscious again and the metal was blank. Flattened like clay.

A stain started growing on the ground next to you and it bubbled up through the metal until it became a puddle. Everyone backed away to the sides of the lift while it shook and stalled and Jack pulled you from the ground as the creature became manifest from liquid metal.

"What is that, Doctor?" Jack asked holding you with one hand and aiming his weapon at the creature of living metal.

"Metal," I thought out loud. "Metal that can take any shape. Or form. Metal that can change. Metal that can adapt. It's metal on a mission. And that mission is to destroy us. How does it know what will destroy us?"

The liquid metal oozed into being, towering over us in a smooth, silvery and shapeless form, bubbling and boiling closer as it leaned forward, assessing the greatest threat in the room and we were only halfway up to the next level.

Then it changed.

"What's it doing?" Bernárd asked.

"It's adapting!" I said. "Adapting to the strongest fighter in the room."

Suddenly the metal grew a humanoid shape, then clothes, a chiseled jaw, a long navy-blue army coat and big blue eyes. A second Jack Harkness took shape right in front of us.

"Should I be flattered?" Jack asked petrified and he handed you over to me.

The second Jack brushed away the lock of hair on his forehead. He had mimicked Jack perfectly in practically every way.

"Good luck," I said and backed away. With a flick of the sonic the lift was spurred into motion again while Jack avoided the punches of his metal self.

But it wasn't just an imitation of Jack. It created itself to be better. It didn't share Jack's flaws. Maybe that's what makes him human.

The lift rattled finally and shook to a standstill when it reaches its destination and I opened the doors for all twenty passengers to exit in a hurry. Some bumped into the creature on their way out. Others could no longer even tell the difference between the two. I could tell you right now. It's the voice.

I quickly examined the second platform of the Eiffel Tower for threats, found Buffalo Bill and handed you to him to safeguard.

"If anything happens to her..." I said to him but I didn't even have time to finish the thought. "Nikola, get out of there!"

Every punch Jack threw hit unstained metal. I tried sonicking the creature for some clues to its nature, perhaps some achilles heel, but whenever I tried the creature would take a swing at me.

"Run, Doctor!" Jack finally said through hurried breaths after being thrown on the ground a third time.

"I'm not leaving you here!" sonicking the creature from the doorway.

"You did before!" Jack said, dodging a punch that hit and buckled the wall of the lift behind him. "You can do it again!"

"I can help you!"

"No, this is my fight, Doctor! This is something I have to do alone!"

"But you can't! You idiot!" I said as he punched the lift controls. "You'll die!"

"I can't die, remember?" Jack said and one final punch sent the lift hurtling down below.

"Then you two have something in common!" I yelled down the lift shaft. "But it's not a fight to the death: it's a fight to the pain!"

I turned on the spot and saw fifty oblivious humans staring at me for guidance. I told them I could save them. It was time for me to keep my promises. But it was going to be tricky. Nemo wasn't going to let us go that easily. Every second we eluded him angered him.

He was standing at the centre of his strategy room surrounded by the lieutenants that had failed him previously. A burdening silence thickened the dark.

He watched impatiently as he gripped his fingers around the edge of the only round table standing at the centre of this perfectly round black abode surrounded by shadows. Above the table in the air floated a hologram made of tiny droplets raining down from the ceiling which formed into an image of the Eiffel Tower structure within a beaming blue bubble.

A clump of red dots indicated the presence of life on the second platform. One flickering dot just returned down to the first where it was about to be surrounded by four new white dots.

"The drones have been released, sir," one of the pirates spoke to his captain.

Nemo didn't reply. He merely watched.

His loyal servants were waiting in silence. They did not question any confusion.

But someone would.

"This isn't real. This isn't happening..."

Nemo ordered silence but he was the only one hearing it be broken. He ignored you just like he did all other voices trapped in the lower decks. But you were different. You were new.

"You're kidding!"

"WHO ARE YOU?" Nemo bellowed at the dark.

Then he found you standing at the other side of the table (or at least an idealized mental version of you) folding your arms and raising an eyebrow at the new Captain.

Like a ghost who haunts her killer you haunted Nemo. Good for you.

"YOU?" Nemo said. "How did you..."

"You tell me."


	27. Judgment Day

The only man he was ever going to be happy with, the one man who can kill Captain Jack Harkness, was himself.

The lift had come crashing down, but it didn't matter because Jack was thrown out the carriage before it even came to a standstill. His back nearly broke bouncing off the bulkheads. (See what I did there?) But he managed to hold on in the end and climb his way to the stairwell inside the Tower's leg.

Jack may have been immortal but he wasn't devoid of feeling, especially pain. The taste of his own blood in his mouth reminded him of that. Even an immortal bleeds.

The blob of metal pursuing him up the winding metal stairwell morphed back into his own handsome face again and it didn't bother him at all. He countered with a self-deprecating joke.

"This is so weird," he chuckled hastily.

Then under the cover of humour Jack tried to kick the metal impostor down the stairwell but it had grabbed his foot before it ever touched its chest. The metal man pushed him to the ground.

Jack imagined it would be easy for such an unstoppable force to steamroll right over a human. He'd be the most handsomest pancake. It'd be hard to come back from that one and very painful.

"Can you talk?" Jack asked the silent threat bearing down on him. With every approaching move Jack responded in kind and retreated up the stairwell.

"Okay, so you only look like me, but you don't think like me. You don't know me. You just want to kill me."

An echo of his former self. Jack drew breath for a final charge.

"Good luck with that," And he threw himself upon his metal self and sent them both falling down the stairwell. They fell over each other and rolled until Jack couldn't work out metal from flesh.

I must admit, climbing the Eiffel Tower without the view can be quite dizzying. Without a point of reference there really doesn't feel like any change has taken place. Except we did climb.

And for all I knew Jack went down, falling at a 70 degree angle to the first platform, or so I hoped.

If he'd fallen down through the pant leg of the Tower the only thing saving him from open space would've been the lift's strong cables and pulleys. Kudos to the Americans for that one.

Except we were all still trapped within the framework of Eiffel's structure, built out of the remains of Nemo's ship, built like a giant web of metal machinations stretching out above us toward the top.

Every step on the metal grain floors seemed to shake the structure like a rattled fence. We could feel every remote motion reverbate across the metal. Something was definitely coming up.

This was the Eiffel Tower. The future of human history was about to be decided here. And yet all I could think about was fireworks.

"Don't worry, the plan is still in effect! And it's a good plan!" I told the survivors while the tremors of an approaching death shook the tower.

"What was that, Doctor?" Bernárd asked, but it didn't seem wise to tell him or anyone.

Nemo's metal monsters were on their way. They were part of his ship, made of his ship, they were his ship! But was a flight of stairs going to stop one of the most deadliest creations in the universe?

"We can't go up, Doctor," Bill told me. He stood in front of me like a soldier reporting to his superior officer and I hated it with every fibre of my being. "The third floor's out of bounds."

"I'm the Doctor," I said. "Nothing is out of bounds for me."

"He's right, Doctor. And I should know," Bernárd said. The silence brought back memories of the engineer who created this structure and the boy that had never left his side. "The construction workers were still working on the top. I doubt the lift's even working."

I looked up trying to imagine the state of things up there in my mind. It didn't work.

"It has to be. There's no other way. Doesn't matter. We'll have to make it work!" I said and leaped toward the centre of the platform.

**A three-story structure with an unfinished third one? Sounds like a metaphor for your entire story.**

Oh, behave will you. Trust me, I've got a really good ending planned for you but the trick is to get there first. Resolution is tricky. But how can you resolve anything if you can't remember it?

How do you deal with a trauma that never happened?

"Three Drones," I mused out loud to anyone within hearing range. "Jack won't hold them for long. All he did was buy us some time by distracting him. We have to use it. There's no other choice. Bill, get your people inside that elevator. Or should I say lift? Or 'Ascenseur'? Listen to me. Just do as I say and we'll all live. Simple, yet effective."

"And dangerous," Bill added.

"That too."

What's an adventure without some danger? A good horror without a good scare? Life's got all those things. Art imitates life imitates art. But when it's real it gets messy. And very frightening.

And exciting.

"If we all survive you get to tell your grandchildren how you sailed the Eiffel Tower beyond the solar system and lived," I told everyone. "If your grandchildren are still alive by the time we get back."

In the back of my mind there's this constant clock. Time is a Time Lord's instinct. The river we traverse. The songs we sing. So much to do in so little time while the Earth was slowly turning into a giant ball of timey whimey stuff until it would eventually explode.

Fireworks.

"...Doctor, where's the box?" Bernárd then asked. He wasn't the only one to wonder.

"There has to be a way of stopping them!" I said musing out loud again. It's a thing I do. It helps me think.

"Doctor?"

"I just don't know how yet. But we've got ourselves a distraction! And distractions are good! It bought us some time. Thank you, Jack!"

"You know how to fix elevators?" Bill asked.

"Simple block and tackle system! Only in reverse..." I exclaimed while sonicking the insides of the elevator. You have to know the basics in order to get it to work. Mind you, 1889 is very basic. "Lift operator! Where's the lift operator? We're going to need him!"

"I'll find him," Bill said and Nikola took his place. Finally someone who can understand what I'm talking about. And that'll be a first.

"Two hydraulic rams exerting a force 8 times the total weight of the carriage...wait, that's the other lifts, this one is different! But different in what way?"

"Doctor," Bernárd pointed out by leaping in front of me and barring my way. "The box? The engine! The thing! Where is it?"

And then it hit me. Bernárd gave the box to me. I made him give it to me. And what did I do? Jack handed Amy to me (I mean you) and what did I do with the box? I literally stopped to let my mind panic for a bit.

"I left it in the lift," I finally said.

"But the lift is back down!" Bernárd yelled after me as I rushed back towards the empty shaft.

"Okay, distractions are bad!" I finally said.

"Distractions are definitely bad. What do we do? I don't know. Do yóu know? We'd have to get back down. They'd never expect that! We could surprise them just before they kill us!...How terrific."

"Doctor, they can't kill us. Remember?" Bernárd said. "I die back on Earth in the past. I can't die, because I'm already dead!"

I almost would've told him to hold on to that thought. He was going to need it.

Bernárd shocked me, actually. You were locked inside a metal mask, Jack was fighting a metal version of himself and now Bernárd was willing to die to stop himself from dying.

"Rory was right," I said. "I am dangerous. This is all my fault."

"You're all we've got!" Bernárd spoke. "Gustave said so! We need you!"

"I'm getting the box back, Bernárd," I said. Oh, I love alliteration.

"I'm coming with you," the boy spoke eagerly.

"No," I said. "You're getting on that lift."

"Doctor!"

I had to make him understand the danger.

"Bernárd, there are things down there. Things that want to kill you. It doesn't matter when you die, you're dead. Just because time can be rewritten doesn't mean things can't get worse."

"I'm going to die," Bernárd said. "How much worse can it get?"

Sometimes I envy how little you know. How little you have to fear...

Your lives, your worlds, are so small, because you know so little! It's practically vacant in that little melonhead of yours.

The Doctor tapped Amy's forehead with his knuckle.

**Oi!**

Extraordinary things are called extraordinary because they aren't ordinary. They are extra. Special. And they're special because they're rare. In the life of any ordinary person this stuff doesn't happen every day. Just one day and the next day all is well again and what's left is just silence after the big day. A disquiet. When all the adrenaline has faded and you're left staring at a blank ceiling.

And I live for moments like that. The big days. I've lived so many extraordinary days that they've become ordinary. The normal life, the normal person, they are extraordinary to me.

Sure, the big days are amazing. Everyone likes being the hero of the story, but this story isn't about us.

We time-travellers read history like it's a book, but reality is never like the stories. I could tell you everything about Bernárd and you still wouldn't know him. He's the ordinary man travelling the slow path. They are history. We're just passing through.

We're cheating. Life in the TARDIS is simple. The real world is hard. A simple life. The one thing I could never have. The one thing that's been robbed from you...

And Jack's just the small town boy that got in over his head. Still the good old-fashioned romantic deep down. He gets to live everything. For millions of years. An extraordinary ordinary life. Many lives, in fact. Perhaps too many.

That's why the death of a single, boring ordinary man is the most important thing in the universe. I had to protect him but Bernárd wouldn't listen. He insisted on coming with me.

I know I told him to keep close but I had to change the plan. I kept trying to reason with him but he was terrified of being left alone again."I'm trying to protect you. Just get on that lift..."

"No."

"There isn't any other way. Run along and..."

"I can help, I'm not..."

"JUST DO AS I SAY!" I yelled. I lost my patience. I did not have the time for this.

Poor kid brings out the worst in me. Would I have fought harder to save his life if he would've been a painter, an artist, a scientist, a future president?

What if he can be all those things? What if I can save his life? But how could I? I couldn't save mine. I couldn't save Rory. It's the curse of the Time Lords I have to bear alone.

I'm the only one who can see. I'm the one who has to read all these stories and remember them. These sad, terrifying, brilliant stories. I'm here to live them with these people. And so are you. We're in this together. You're part of my story now and their story has become ours and if it ends, so do we.

We're only ever here to help. Don't forget that.

"You shouldn't talk to people like that," Nikola suddenly said when I bumped into him. The pale Hungarian polyglot and genius may not have had a knack with people, but he did have the decency to recognise common sense when it hit him in the face. "It upsets them."

"Good point," I rightly noted.

"I don't know who you are, Doctor." Nikola pointed out. I couldn't help but respect the man's moustache. "I don't assume to understand all of the universe's mysteries, nor expect to find all answers to all questions in life, even though it will never stop me trying."

"Good man!" I said, thinking he had finished and I patted him on the back and walked on.

"There's one thing you should know, Doctor," he added and I stopped midstep.

There was something quite unsettling and grim about the look on Tesla's face. I wish I could've spent more time with him. There was so much I wanted to ask him. He really is brilliant, you know.

"We're all putting our lives in the hands of a stranger," Nikola told me off. "Show us the proper respect."

"I was just about to," I swallowed. Well, it was hardly a democratic decision. It was just me against the world.

"Oh, and Nikola?"

This time it was his turn to turn back, still puzzled by how I knew his name.

"Thank you," I said and he nodded curtly.

He was one of the few who understood. You can't know how you're going to be remembered, but I try to do the right thing in spite of it.

But with fearful men like Simon de Leeuw it's never enough. He probably never expected to find himself in one of my stories; one of the historic case files he's been studying for years on end. He noticed me in the pages of history. Nothing more but brief cameos, but that's why I never stay in one place too long.

"Find a catastrophe and he's there. Anywhere in history," Simon started telling Claude. The composer always had been a stickler against authority.

"Who is he?" Claude Debussy asked.

"I don't know. Pray we'll never find out."

My mere presence changed his life. He was my responsibility.

"Amy..." I said. I found you. They were taking good care of you and becoming sick and tired of hearing me tell them not to touch the mask. Not even with a fingernail.

"I don't know if you can hear me," I told you and your hands were still cold and lifeless, but your pulse was still pounding through your veins. "but I know you came back for me. You followed me all the way out here at the edge of the solar system. Look at where it got you. Oh, I can never get rid of you...Impossible Amy Pond."

"Doctor!" Bill called for me. The lift operators had been found. They would need all the help they could get.

I kissed your hand.

"I've got to leave now, Amy, but I'm going to leave you with some friends of mine. They'll take care of you while I'm gone. Won't you, girls? What are your names?" I asked them.

The two posh girls, probably royal, told me their names and I told a joke to set their nerves at ease.

"Please take care of her while I'm gone. I won't be long. Well, what's long, anyway? It's all relative. Five minutes. Ten years."

"I couldn't help but lean in and whisper into your ear.

"You're brilliant, Amy, you really are. You're a bright shining light in the dark. Don't ever go out. Not even when I'm not looking. Now, I'm off. You be good."

And when I got up and turned away I couldn't help but add something special.

"I'll be back!" I added with a twist of my heels. Of course, the reference was lost on everyone. Arnold wouldn't even be born for another sixty years.

And that was a good thing. Timelines were still coalescing. Time was still running out. No, scratch that. This wasn't a fixed event. Time's in flux. It literally is in flux. Time was waiting. Time was stalking. Following me wherever I went. Everything I did, even the slightest decision was changing the course of time itself.

That's why it was so important to keep Bernárd alive. He wasn't supposed to die yet. It isn't fair. I could save him, but what if I'm not meant to? The options are still there. A thousand options spinning around in my head. Alternate realities where we're all alive or where we're all dead. Or where we never existed in the first place. They're waiting for us.

Everything depended on the moment that was yet to come. But it was so close. Fireworks.

**I'm brilliant.**

What?

**Oh, you know what I'm talking about. You keep pretending, but I know your heart, Time Boy.**

Don't call me that.

**You called me brilliant.**

You áre brilliant.

**Oh, I bet you say that to all the girls...**

Well...

**Shut up! Finish the damn story so we can go home.**

Home? Is that what you want?

**Oh, you know what I meant.**

Yes...

No.

**Just tell your story, Doctor. I'll stop interrupting.**

Bless. Now...

**You love to hear the sound of your own voice...**

"How'd you know so much about elevators, Doctor?" Bill's lovely right hand woman asked me and I told her:

"Same way you learned about guns, Annie. Practice. Experience. And mostly wikipedia. Everybody get aboard the lift! It'll save your life. Not everybody at the same time!"

Bill then approached me. I was already expecting him.

"Let me come with you," Bill said.

"I'd love that, Bill. But I can't let that happen. You're way more important than silly old me. If anything were to happen to you...and besides, you've got these terrified people to look after. They'll need someone. I'm not that person. I just like puzzles."

"And danger."

"That too."

"What about the Drones, Doctor?" Bill asked.

"Don't worry! When we're out of range the Drones will simply shut down and revert to their basic components. Scrap metal!"

"Is that your plan, Doctor?" he asked. "Is that what the box does?"

"I don't know. Let's find out."

"What about your friend, Doctor?"

"Jack?" I said. "He's having the time of his life. Take care of Amy and Bernárd. If anything happens to them..."

"Good luck, Doctor."

"Anything...Take care of history, Buffalo Bill Cody. I know I'm leaving it in good hands."

The lift went up a second later, carrying the first twenty or thirty passengers up and just as I was about to leave there was this uncomfortable sound of chafing leather.

"Doctor," Bill suddenly said before I was even two steps away. "I can't move."

It had snuck up on us while we weren't looking. From below. I was lucky. I moved away just in time but Bill's boots had been caught. A thin layer of reflective silver liquid spread across the floor like an expanding puddle of water, a sentient puddle of water, grabbing hold of everything it could touch.

Annie cried and clung to her rifle. The silent Sioux Sitting Bull could not believe his eyes witnessing what was unfolding in front of them.

"Everybody stand back! Shooting it won't help!"

I was thinking. The liquid was spreading and soon it would reach optimum mass for physical manifestation.

"Take your boots off, Bill!" Annie cried, but the metal was already climbing over its shoes and reaching his ankles. It was spreading over his skin until finally the puddle stopped expanding horizontally and instead opted to grow vertically, drowning every part of Bill's body with its liquid.

"Doctor, help him!" Nikola demanded. I sonicked the liquid for data as it spread.

When Bill touched it with his hand it jumped to his fingernails and spread towards his elbow. He was going to be completely engulfed in a minute, then dead in two. He was effectively turning into a statue.

History was going to change. It would adapt. In two minutes there'd be a world without Buffalo Bill Cody and his infamous Wild West show. No cowboy clichés. No old West stereotypes.

That surely can't be all we remember him for.

After Gustave Eiffel, how many more pebbles were going to change the flow of river? How many more men were going to die today? How many more could history take before it was stretched to its limit?

The Drone's metal was crawling over his chest and he could no longer feel or move his arm.

"No, no, no, no, NOOO!"

I should've seen it. This was my fault. And I knew that somewhere up there Nemo was watching this. To him we were but a few red dots on a blue screen. Just a number; not a tragedy.

"Why are you doing this?" you asked him.

"You call it murder," Nemo answered. "I call it pest control."

And all the pity you might've felt for him vanished into thin air.


	28. Monsters

"Hold still!" I told Bill as the metal crawled up his chest. The silvery goo managed to engulf button after button of his formerly impeccable uniform that stood out underneath his grey longcoat.

"Hold perfectly still!"

I managed to stall the Drone for now and made it harder for its molecules to coalesce into being. Gas is one element it can't become. Dispersal was its weakness, but it was still slowly reaching Bill's throat.

I couldn't stop it. Slowing it would do for now. It bought me time to think. That's all I needed.

Oh, I saw the fear in the proud man's eyes. Suffocation is a nasty way to die. The pulse was hardly keeping the metal at bay.

"Come on, come on!" I told myself, keeping the sonic screwdriver firmly aimed at its target. Bill's entire body had succumbed to a layer of the hardening metal now and only his head was sticking out from it.

"They're Drones. They're metal," I summarized and I began to sweat. "How do they work? How is he controlling them?"

The others were desperate to step in but I had to keep reminding them nothing would work. Nothing I hadn't thought of yet. But there had to be a way.

"Don't touch it! It'll jump on to you. I can't save both of you. I can't save you all...I can't...URGH!"

Bill could barely move his chest underneath that layer of metal. He was watching me. He was waiting for me. He had faith in me. But it's not enough.

"They're creatures. They're metal. Like the mask. They're part of the ship. They are essentially the ship! Which means..."

The metal reached his adam's apple. His larynx. It had almost completely covered the distance of his neck and was going for Bill's chin. My hand was shaking. I had to keep it levelled.

The answer was right in front of me, the solution was staring at me, but the more the metal encapsulated Buffalo Bill Cody the more it seemed to slip away. I almost had to grab every thought physically to keep it from escaping me. Like building a sandcastle and the tide's coming in.

Oh, the tide's always coming in...

"There's a signal. A connection between the Drone and the Ship. WHAT'S THAT CONNECTION?" I yelled.

And at that very same time in some other place not far from our own suffering there were voices screaming in the dark. And they would keep screaming even when their throats could no longer bear to sustain the noise. Can't be sure whether they were slaves to the machine or eternally on hold. A dreadful metal limbo...

But you were different. You ascended the background noise even though you felt the horror Nemo put you in. The cold inside the mask. He felt it too.

"Can you hear it?" Nemo asked you. Inside the darkness of his ship. "They are dying all around you, aren't they? Screaming. You can't help them. Your life will be the last to be extinguished."

He was fixated on the flashing red dots with a restless intensity you'd only seen once before. He couldn't stop tapping his fingers on his folded arms. He had a grip like a bear but the mind of a fox. A very paranoid fox with a squadron of pirates at his command.

"Is that it?" you said to him as the hologram flashed before your eyes. "You're going to watch us die?"

"No," Nemo said. "You're going to watch them die."

After so many years trapped inside it, his very senses stolen from him, that very mask had become his only way of feeling anything. Like an absurd umbilical cord, they were trapped inside the metal ship's womb until it was finally their turn to be reborn.

In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is King and in the land of the dead the living becomes Captain. And the voices haunted him everywhere. Like children fighting over a computer, terrified they'll usurp his spot when he lets it go for a single second. Paranoia! Oh, if only he'd learned to share.

It's an obsession that had literally taken over his life. He's fighting to stay alive for all the wrong reasons, fighting to possess it...but life's not something to take. Life's a gift.

Wanting it for the sake of wanting it defeats the purpose when life can be so much more. It's like money. Wanting money for the sake of having it is pure greed, when you can buy a yacht and sail the oceans, build hospitals and help the needy, anything...Anything at all.

Buying things keeps the economy going. Living life keeps life going. And it's always about balance...Similarities end there. Well, I hope.

Life's a tool. It's useless on its own. It's what you do with it that makes it count. What makes it beautiful. And the potential is there. It's everywhere. Especially in the face of death. White is whitest compared to black. But then again, I've learned to deal with the grey areas...

Bill was dying, they were all dying, even Jack, and there was nothing you could do about it.

There were a thousand possible outcomes narrowed down to a handful and only one of them had the happy ending. Quite a few of them held the end of human history.

"We need to get out of here, Doctor!" Nikola spoke wisely. A man can only survive without oxygen for 3 to 5 minutes before the brain is too permanently damaged to live on. A little bit of cold would've helped. "When it finishes with him it'll be coming for us next!"

"You can't!" Annie yelled, raising her rifle again aimlessly. "Save him, Doctor, please!"

A thousand outcomes. A thousand voices. A thousand possible realities. A thousand different Nemoes locked in the dark. All paths leading to the same time, the same space, the same ship...

Who was the first Nemo to break the timeline? To shatter it. The first Nemo to alter himself...And which Nemo are we dealing with now? First, last, does it matter? Is there a difference?

Oh, I'm computing a thousand different things at the same time. Sometimes it helps if I approach the subject from a different angle. An important angle. The man behind the curtain. The man controlling everything. But is he?

A million sperm and only one beats them to the punch. And this is the Nemo we ended up with. The mutineer. Any other Nemo would've lead to any other outcome, but any other Nemo wouldn't have had the same prowess for escape.

"Is that who he is?" I tried to deduce. "Is that who I'm fighting?"

Because it wasn't going to stop here. Saving Bill right then and there wouldn't solve the problem. The signal was the problem. The signal was the ship's the key.

"Doctor..." Bill managed to utter finally before the metal hardened his jaw in place.

"But it's more than just a ship. It's more than just metal," I continued. "It could turn itself into a complete replica of Captain Jack Harkness. It can become whatever it wants to be. Whatever it needs to be..."

He closed his lips, otherwise the metal could've poured down his throat, but his nostrils were exposed. Finally he closed his eyes. His life in my hands...

"Doctor!" Annie cried.

"There's nothing we can do, Doctor!" Nikola yelled.

You first have to understand the problem to know how to solve it. Understand the question before you can answer it. And if you're very lucky then you can make the problem part of the solution.

A word of advice, Amy. Don't mess with alternative timelines, or parallel worlds for that matter. It never ends well.

Of course, think of the Nemoes that didn't end up on that lower deck. Those that could've had healthy lives somewhere in the multiverse and who never heard an inkling of the fate that might've awaited them here...

Think of a universe without the Eiffel Tower...

And I knew. It was running through my mind in a thousand different ways. Logical deduction can lead to the truth, but there's no point in arguing past possibilities when dealing with present certainties.

The timeline had been broken. Fact. The Paradox Glass is sustaining the breach.

No.

The Glass ís the breach. A splinter in time. Without it the paradox could have never existed. The unresolved events would've imploded into itself first chance it got.

Without that splinter in time contained within that glass box none of this could've ever happened.

Nemo's once linear life has been allowed to shatter because of it, creating more 'breaks' within the original timeline and maiming it beyond recognition, eventually leading to the end of human history. 'And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.'

So my plan was simple. I was part of events then so I couldn't just pop out and go back. No TARDIS! I had to stop the breaks. Like a line of dominoes falling, I had to step in and save Domino Day before it would end a billion years too soon.

Or like, the Little Dutch Boy who sticks his finger in the hole in the dyke. But with the lives of Gustave, Jack and now Bill at stake I was running out of fingers to stem the flood of water.

And there were cracks. The damage was spreading. The fire at the end of the universe, the water beyond that dyke, was going to wipe away everything that ever existed.

And sometimes I think I'm the only one who can stop it. But I'm not, Amy. I've got you.

The key to saving time...is you. It's always been you.

**Stop it. You're making me blush.**

A thousand Nemoes but only one Amy Pond stuck inside his mind.

"You don't even know who I am. You don't even care!" you told him. "And I don't know who you are, Nemo, but you're going to stop this."

"NOBODY tells me what to do," Nemo responded. "Not you and not your Doctor. I am the Captain of this ship. It's my turn now."

You were there but simultaneously here. You were in both places at once, like the dimensional hub. The same connection. Two places becoming one. Two minds connected, not swapping, but overlapping!

But, it's like your eyes, Amy. Your brain and your eyes. You can't see everything at once. You can only focus on one thing at a time. So sometimes you were on the Eiffel Tower and sometimes you slipped somewhere else, saw something else, inside Nemo's mind. But there was more, oh there was so much more.

"The metal!" I cried out as the understanding flowed through me. It's like warm eggnog, apple pie and a whole lot of free Sundays! Nothing beats a good 'eureka' moment!

I looked at the others but they didn't understand. Oh, sometimes it's definitely good being me.

"It's psychic!" I said. See? Never an offhand remark with me. Something's gotta give.

**Stop trying to be clever, Doctor, and get to the point. So I save the day?**

Oh yes, you do, Amelia Jessica Pond! Yes. You. Do! But not just yet.

I ran towards you and asked the two nice French girls to put you down quickly, but gently, and in the corner of my eyes I saw the metal engulf Bill's face. Five minutes and counting.

"The metal formed her face!" I explained to Nikola. "She wanted to warn us so the metal let her! She can control the metal! She can save Bill! All of us! She's the key!"

Yet the metal showed no sign of life. Two places cloud the mind. Nikola and I bowed over your comatose self.

"Amy?" I said to you. "Amy, I know you can hear me. You need to wake up. You need to come back. We need you! I need you. The whole universe needs you!"

Now, there was a second problem. Two places were one. Through the mask you were connected to the ship, connected to Nemo, but that meant Nemo was connected to you.

He was hearing everything you heard. He knew I was reaching out to you. He tried to distract you. Every second wasted meant a life lost. The Drones could start morphing into something a bit more deadly any second and there were more roaming below, like giant, metal, silvery centipedes crawling across the metal beams of the tower.

**Urgh. Thanks for that mental image!**

"From the moment I was born they've been trying to kill me, trying to take away my right to captain the Kamorath." Nemo mused gripping the back of the chair that manifested itself in front of him at his request. The metal liquid seemed to surge upward towards his hands, striking some invisible barrier and then harden on command.

You already saw the shape of what it would become before the process had been completed. Nemo shaped the concept in his mind and the ship made it for him.

"You're so keen to crawl inside my head, peek inside my mind, why not try and see what I'm talking about. Witness my memories. I challenge you, Amelia Jessica Pond, to walk a mile in my shoes. I dare you to live my life, for just a single moment. Then you'll know what I mean. You'll know who I am. So sit."

I felt his presence. Something I'd felt before but couldn't quite place. He was right there beside you and inside your mind.

"He's distracting you, Amy!" I yelled at the mask. "He knows you're the only one who can help us! Don't let him beat you, Amy. Don't let him fool your senses!"

Every second you spent inside that mask distorted reality for your mind. Trying to reconcile both, your brain adapts to overlap the two places inside your mind, until they're merged completely, physically overlapping both signals! The brain will adapt to this new standard of reality and won't take kindly to someone pulling the plug on one. It'll be like shutting down half your brain. Permanent brain damage after a few hours.

Why is there never enough time? What's a Time Lord without time?

"Amy, you have to focus on my voice," I said to you. "You can control the metal! You can stop the Drones from attacking! Amy!"

On the other end my voice seemed to reverbate down into the bottom of a well, inside which you could no longer tell what was real and what wasn't. All the items on the wall could've been relics of past captains or elements of Nemo's mind. Figments.

"Wow," you told him. "So you had a tough childhood. Don't take it out on innocent people!"

Oh, he knew just how to push the right buttons with you. Of course, he was in your mind! Scanning the surface he knew just what kind of attitude would set you off. A tirade of insults formulating in your mind stopped you from decyphering the background noise that was trying to raise your attention. He knew it.

Every second focusing on Nemo disconnected you from reality more and more. And I couldn't get through.

He knew I was listening and trying to get through.

"No-one is innocent," Nemo said. "But what did a five-year old do to deserve the annihilation of his entire homeworld? Yes, it happened. I'm the only one left to remember. An entire civilization dead all for one boy. Yes, I did this. My future self. And it is inevitable I do it again. It cannot be undone. I am an anomaly. A child without parents. The man without a past. The man without a name.

Time did this to me. I had no part in it. I did not ask for it to happen. I did not ask to become a monster."

Sometimes they were echoes, sometimes they were visuals flooding the dark with ideas, fading like ghosts, like a clip show from hell. Memories of a bygone age, and all he chose to remember was the pain.

"Then don't be. Stop this!" you yelled.

"Who am I to question the laws of time? Who are any of us? I've seen how it all ends. In the dark. There are hundreds of versions of me on the deck below. Every single choice they made had them ending up here. Tell me, did I really stand a chance? Someone clearly wants me to be this way."

"You can be better!"

"I don't need to be. I AM THE CAPTAIN. AND THIS IS MY SHIP. My predecessor was right. This is my property. I have every right to its remains."

You shed a single tear for him. It rolled across your cheek and it wasn't even real. You touched it with the tip of your index finger and the drop seemed to sparkle and reflect light that wasn't even there.

"No," you said. "Can't you see? You don't own it. It owns you."

"I. Don't. Care," Nemo said. "My conscience doesn't exist anymore, so there's no point in pleading to it. This is my destiny now. This is all I ever wanted and no-one's going to take it away from me!"

"Only one man can."

"I already told you. It doesn't matter. I win," Nemo said, but then the unexpected happened.

"Not even the Doctor can stop the silence. I am the Khamorath's final captain. It is inevitable."

He keeps saying that, doesn't he? He's obviously never met me. But you weren't talking about me. You know about the chain of command. Only Nemo can dethrone Nemo. And there were a thousand Nemoes waiting below to do exactly that. He's ruining it for himself, really. And it's the eve of self-destruction.

A streak of sad-masochism in him didn't seem to mind. No, he was enjoying it. He wanted to endure. It made him feel important. Powerful. For him, all the suffering in the universe happens for a reason. Some cling to hope in times of hardship but Nemo clung to greed.

Everything you threw at him just made him more of a martyr in his own eyes.

He got what he wanted now. Screw the rest. Such a handsome face hid a twisted mind. Can you blame him for turning out as he did? Yes.

And no.

And yes. What we are defines us, not what we could've been. Wallowing in self-pity never helped anyone, nor sulking in the dark alone. Alone's just alone. Nothing romantic about it.

An eternity alone would drive anyone insane. I'm living proof.

"Who are you to judge me, Pond?" Nemo said. "You're just a girl. D'you know how long it's been since I was with a woman? Guess."

"I'd rather not," you said as he approached you.

"Amy! Don't let him get to you! Don't let him into your mind!" I yelled from the bottom of a well.

"I know what you're afraid of," Nemo spoke.

"Focus on my voice, Amy! Focus on me! You can find me, Amy! I know you can!"

"You're afraid of the dark," Nemo said. "Afraid to be alone. What you don't see is, Amelia Pond, you are alone."

"Don't focus on the bad bits!" I stressed. "Don't focus on the dark!"

"The mask is the dark!" you yelled back at me in Nemo's face. "I don't want to go back there!"

"You'll be blind, helpless..." Nemo described. "I was stuck inside that mask for five years until I was able to pass it on to you."

"Doctor!"

"You'll die there," Nemo spoke. "In the dark. Alone. Forgotten. Your consciousness will fade away from your mind like a faded memory of someone you once loved..."

"Don't focus on the pain! Remember Dr. Bracewell? And the Daleks? You did that! You saved him! That was you!"

You remembered helping Dr. Bracewell. You remembered whispering words that saved his life. But it didn't feel like you anymore. It felt like someone else. It wasn't that long ago.

"Doctor, why don't I remember?" you asked.

"You are empty," Nemo said. "We all are. We're seashells on the beach and the tide's coming in. The tide's always coming in."

"Doctor!"

"You need to concentrate!" I said. "Focus on my voice!"

And the last thing you saw before the dark swept in was Nemo's ominous smile.

This was not the man Jack met at the Time Agency. He'd been a much older man. Perhaps his life had him be or become a Time Agent as well, but I can't be certain. Let's say he was. His encounter with unwritten time might've been his motivation for joining and maybe even specializing in that particular subject. But Jack's Nemo was dead.

And just before he died he'd revealed Jack had been a monster. Even worse than the man tasked with erasing civilizations from history. Five years of Jack's memory had been erased and there's no way to know for sure he was telling the truth, but he was willing to kill Jack at first sight over it.

Jack couldn't remember and he'd tried so hard. They stole five years of his memory and ever since then he'd been intent on getting even with the Time Agency by conning them out of lots of money. (Tricks usually involving Pompeii or a German bomb.)

But he never once stopped to consider if it had been done for the right reasons. Maybe he shouldn't remember. Maybe that was not the man he wanted to be. That was not something he would want to remember or have on his conscience.

And the man and monster he did not want to be was pounding him below. On the Eiffel Tower's first floor. The metal that carried his face and wore his coat. Maybe he deserved this pummeling. This pain. This was his punishment.

"You're a sick man, Jack Harkness," the words emerged from his bloodied mouth as the metal man towered over his pummeled flesh again. And he wondered whether he wanted to die. No, he had so much life still ahead of him.

"I left that part of myself behind," he spoke again as he fought tooth and nail hitting the metal as hard as he could. Bullets wouldn't hurt it. "I moved on. This isn't who I am anymore. I'm better. At least, I want to be."

But the metal man just wouldn't stop.

"Hell, I'm going to be. As soon as I get the hell out of here. I'm going to help these people, save a planet and kiss the Doctor. It's what I'm good at. Maybe I'll even kiss Amy while I'm at it."

"You're optimistic!" you said. It was your voice. Jack looked around but there was no-one besides him and the monster.

Then the monster stopped. Then it winked.

"Hello, gorgeous," you said through metal Jack's lips.

"Amy?" Jack replied completely flabbergasted and loving it. Oh, he loves impossible things. He's definitely one of mine.

"Oh, you don't want to know what I'm thinking right now."

"You might get lucky," you told him. "But first things first..."


	29. The Question

I'm the cleverest man in the whole universe but sometimes I can just be tremendously stupid.

Thing is, I've been so busy trying to solve the puzzle and save the day that I forgot to ask a simple question. An important question.

When it came to establishing my priorities that question didn't make it into the top ten, but maybe it should've been. It definitely deserved a place in the top three, right above "What's the mystery behind the glass box?" and right below "Will Buffalo Bill Cody die?".

I can't be expected to know everything. I can't be expected to save everyone. I take on all these responsibilities because I make all these promises I can't keep.

I needed help. I was desperate. The question had completely slipped my mind. And I'm sorry, Amy, I really am, but saving the world wasn't going to be as easy as it just seemed to be.

I was certainly going to slap myself when I'd realize it, but I didn't yet. There was an elephant in the room, or better said, the room was one giant elephant. Let's see if you can work it out.

**Is this a test?**

Let's call it a challenge.

**It's a test. Oh, I hate tests. I was always crap at school.**

I bet you loved school.

**I hated it. They literally had to tie me down to the chair once. Didn't stop me cheating.**

Favourite subject?

**Guess.**

Art. No. History. Ancient history. Mythology.

**You think you're so clever when you do that.**

I am clever. Weren't you listening? Like, at all? Question: people are dying. What do you do?

**Save them.**

Good girl. How?

**I don't know.**

What did I just say? Think back. There's a problem and it needs solving.

**Depends on the problem.**

Exactly. So what do you do?

**Examine the problem. Find a solution.**

Say a man was trapped inside a layer of living metal. What would you do?

**Smash the metal.**

That's what they thought. I already told them it was indestructable, but that didn't stop them trying.

**How'd you know it's indestructable if you don't try to destroy it first?**

Now you're asking the right questions.

There were approximately ten people still trapped in the dark on the Eiffel Tower's second platform, with their backs against the Figaro pavillion. Almost nothing separating them from the cold universe, except beams of metal.

The elevator car could've held up to 65 people and therefore all of us, but I knew why they stayed behind.

They stayed because of me. Bill was dying because of me.

Bill's men started shooting at the metal creature that engulfed Bill when Annie pierced the silence with gunshots, being the first to fire. I objected but it was too late. The violence did nothing to halt the Drone's vicious advance. In fact, it seemed to like it.

That was the first sign that should've jogged my memory, but it didn't.

"That's not good," I said. "That's really not good."

The bullets seemed to be absorbed by the Drone. It only added to its strength. It was food to the creature. It literally ate bullets for breakfast. Someone tried jabbing it with a walking stick but found the creature unwilling to let go of it.

"You're only making it stronger!" I cried out.

You should've put an end to this. You were supposed to control the metal. Force it to let go. But there was something else at play here. Something I should've seen from the start.

"Wood!" Nikola suddenly spoke. "Doctor, clearly there are things it can't absorb. Human flesh and bones, or else it would've devoured him by now. Which means we need wood."

"Wood?" I said.

Nikola ordered Bill's men to start ripping apart the wooden bannisters and start throwing chairs. But Bill was still in there and they had no way of knowing whether their attacks would harm the person inside the creature.

"It doesn't do wood! That's brilliant!" I realized. "We need wood! Preferably a forest or a park...Wood! Where'd you find wood these days? My, a tower made out of iron and all we need is wood. Where's a fork when you need one?"

"Everyone, stand back!" Nikola yelled and I slid across the floor to your side. Without you we didn't stand a chance. We're all damsels in distress here; counting away the time towards our certain destruction.

But we can bend time, cheat death and rig tests. Destiny's never what it seems.

"Where are you, Amy?" I whispered close to your ear. "What have I done?"

In the dark there were a thousand voices. But I was wrong. There were a thousand and one.

Your all too human brain chose to manifest a fully formed you, focusing all of its energy into a single spot, to inhabit and control, instead of even trying to fathom the possibility of taking the house and controlling the lot. The latter option meant stretching the mind thin, overloading your sensors with too much information, flooding Plato's cave with readings of multiple places at once.

First in Nemo's mind and now inside the ship. It was letting you take over but you could barely hold a fraction of it in your hands. I know you don't like to hear it but your humanity was your limitation.

"I can feel it," you told Captain Jack. "It wanted to kill you."

The voices were still roaming the dark. Complete silence and utter noise co-existed in your head (and no it's nothing like wearing headphones). It's two different states of mind.

Or maybe it's exactly like wearing headphones. Invisible ones you can never take off. Headphones that aren't there because you're the headphone! I'm not making any sense am I?

**Nope.**

That's because you're human. The Amy Pond in my story however was only human for the most part at the moment as she remotely controlled one of the ship's detached and hostile parts of itself that attacked the Tower's occupants, like cats sent in to take care of the mice: we just converted a cat.

"Are you okay?" you asked and he stared at how the metal that used to resemble himself changed to become a version of you.

"How is this possible?"

"You can thank me later. Right now we've got work to do."

"Yes, ma'am!" he grinned with a dash of his bruised longcoat.

You were effectively using Nemo's own greatest weapon against him and turning the problem into part of the solution. First lesson learned. Well done. Of course, we only had little time left before the connection would kill you.

But there was another connection, nothing like the one you experienced, blinking in and out of existence on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower. The four-sided glass box started glowing more and more ever since I'd re-activated and drew power from it many moments ago.

It was just lying there but with your new Drone senses you could sense the electromagnetic field growing around it like a bubble of hot radiation, and a warmth that could light up skin. Human skin, not Drone.

"Nemo didn't make this," Jack said. "He's a scavenger, a thief, and besides, Time Agents aren't that smart."

"What is it?" you asked.

"I've seen something similar only once before. A splinter in time, literally. Nemo's found a way to harnass its power."

"It's dangerous, isn't it?"

"In the wrong hands? Definitely," Jack said. "In the right hands? We're looking at the end of the universe."

Nikola could sense it. He could actually see the universe changing colour from turqouise to beige. From birth he had been gifted with a peculiar sight because he could actually see beyond the mind's eye and picture his projects in front of him. An extreme imagination, a brilliant eye for detail and something a little bit more. It's said he could see energy in all places. Sparks flying off a single act, a single motion, like petting a cat. Witness the electricity in the very air.

But this wasn't his imagination. Today he would see the universe end.

The effects of the future rippled into the past, growing stronger and stronger, spreading wider into the universe up until the moment of actual impact. The moment of destiny was slowly approaching. The fate of humanity would be decided in the final few seconds.

Bernárd knew it too. He could feel it in his stomach. His impending death was approaching. He grew sick and tired of waiting for it. No-one could blame him.

As the lift rattled upward carrying over twenty passengers he was the only one determined to go back. He wanted to help me, because I was the only one who could help him. I promised I would.

First there was silence aboard the 'Leon Edoux' lift, then complaints.

"This Tower is cursed," one passenger said, spitting on the floor. "A plight upon Paris. The very iron is poison to us."

Bernárd felt the insult pierce his heart but he did nothing. He endured. He keenly listened and watched, counting the metal beams that went past the open window as the lift was lifted up by water-powered hydraulic pump.

And when it came to a sudden stop the car's passengers screamed.

**They're going to die, aren't they?**

No, they just panicked, but this was all part of the process. The car would only go this far and they had to change lifts to reach the top. A narrow walkway separated the cars. And the familiar cliché 'don't look down!' comes to mind. The lift boy cried out it was time to go but none could bring themselves to move.

The boy started sweating. He didn't sign up for this. Dangling halfway down the neck of the Eiffel Tower and none of them dared to set a foot toward the dark that surrounded them.

"This is what happens when people like the Doctor meddle with our world," Simon told Bernárd. "Our time. We end up paying the price."

Bernárd listened and the information burdened him. He didn't process it. He just took it upon himself to carry it. The end was near.

'Burden me,' he thought to himself. 'That's what I'm here for, aren't I?'

To see all this and not be able to do anything with it. To have a taste of the universe but not be able to eat it. I imagine it can be torture.

He started to wonder about a world without himself in it. He wondered whether anyone would miss him.

They finally, one step at a time, faced their vertigo and walked from one car to the next and Bernárd simply followed mindlessly, going through the motions like a robot, programmed to die.

And if I couldn't help him, he decided that he was going to help himself. He rushed back into the first lift.

"What are you doing?" Simon bellowed. He probably got pushed aside.

"I'm going down," Bernárd said. "Back down. There's nothing for me up there."

"What's the matter with you? Do you want to die?" Simon yelled, trying to get him out. The lift boy nervously beckoned, realizing what was going on after consulting his partner who would operate the second lift. Bernárd called to him after locking the lift's fence.

"Get this lift to go down!" he cried but the lift boy refused.

"You're mad!" Simon yelled. "There's monsters down there!"

"They can't hurt me. I'm already dead."

"This is what the Doctor does to people!" Simon yelled. "This is what he does! They go mad!"

When the lift operator didn't want to help him Bernárd jumped down himself and started fiddling with the controls of the lift. He was there when Gustave Eiffel approved of the designs. He was there when they installed it. He told himself it couldn't be that difficult. And he managed it to work! Oh, I would've liked him.

Bernárd finally felt some life running through his veins again as he retook control.

But Simon was right. I am dangerous. Sometimes.

It took less than a flash for you and Jack to get from the first to the second level. Boy, you do like to cheat.

The both of you were wisecracking and smiling and still unaware of the horror that went on inside the iron suit. The silence in between desperate final breaths, the trapped sensation of pure claustrophobia, wrapped inside cold alloy. Bill was dying and wood didn't affect it. The living metal just wrapped itself around it, let it stick to its skin like glue and devoured it whole.

It managed to stretch the metal but it did nothing to save the man inside. Then everyone did a double take when Amy Pond stepped into the room. Of course, no-one had seen your face by that time so I was the only one to recognise you. It was my double take.

"Lost something?" Jack quipped.

"No," I said, looking back twice from one Amy to the other. "Two Amy Ponds...it really is the end of the world. And is she wearing your coat?"

"Doctor, I get it now. I really do," you said to me and Jack threw me the mysterious glass box.

But you were wrong. You really really didn't.

The people around us were still panicking, still asking questions, still confused and baffled and there was no way to give some condensed explanation to all of them in the limited amount of time we had left. But through all the mania there was a single clear voice that stood apart.

"Doctor," Nikola spoke and his widened expression lead me to the tin soldier dying in a deathly hug, frozen within a layer of metal, but still alive inside. It was moving. The metal was moving, as if a statue of Bill had just grown tiny wheels. And it was moving towards you.

I should've seen it. I should've known long before, but I'm old and stupid and I forget things I shouldn't forget. Things I should never forget. Because I've seen so much.

"Doctor, what's happening?" you asked. A thousand and one voices roaming through your mind.

"It's going to kill us!" Annie cried out. "It killed Cody and now it's going to finish the job it started!"

And I remembered how it absorbed the bullets. Bits and pieces of wood were still sticking out of the metal's surface. It had just oozed around it like glue, stretching itself to its limit, like butter scraped over too much bread. Like your mind.

"Are you taller?" I asked you but I had to let that thought go immediately. The Drone was coming.

"It's recognising the most dangerous person in the room. Just like before," Jack said. "It's going to kill Amy."

"No," I said. "This is different."

At first it was almost slithering, then all of a sudden the hands of the statue that used to be stretched in fear dropped to its sides. The tin soldier raised its feet and started walking towards you. Carrying a dead man inside it and reaching its hand towards you.

"Doctor!" you cried.

"All right, this is scary! This is very frightening!" I admitted. A flick of the sonic didn't do a thing. Jack and I made sure to keep you behind us, but then suddenly you pushed us aside.

"Amy!" I cried.

There are times when something happens. Something extraordinary. And you need someone to make sense of it all. That's me.

That's why I'm the cleverest man in the universe.

"Doctor, what's happening?" Jack asked.

"No idea."

The Drone looked to be composited of a single smooth entity, its skin bright silver and cool as glass, cold, hollow and indestructable. But its appearance of simplicity was a lie. The Drone constituted of various metals scavenged throughout the universe, most of it worthless, but at the heart of it lay a terrible secret. A drop of life in an ocean of death.

You sensed it. As you melded with the metal you could feel what it felt: the very magnetism that made you want to reach out towards it. The Drone felt the change, felt your consciousness and gravitated towards it.

"Amy, don't touch it!" Jack said.

"No," I said. "Let her. She's stronger than the metal. She can absorb it, like it absorbed the bullets. Amy, you can beat it! You didn't give up before, you didn't let it overtake you when Nemo climbed into your mind. You can do it again."

"Stop your yammering! I'm busy!" you yelled back.

I apologized silently.

You hesitated. You fought your instincts telling you to run away and placed your hand upon the metal.

It was draining. I could tell. Thrashing, the metal desintegrated and reverted back to its original components which fell apart in puddles on the floor like sludge. All bits that weren't required were filtered out and separated from the heart of the matter until all that was left standing was a drenched unconscious cowboy and a glowing girl. Bill fell to the ground where his companions rushed to his aid.

"Doctor...I'm glowing," you said, watching your hands.

"You noticed," I said.

You started trembling and lost balance. Both Jack and I were there to hold you up when you fell. The voice grew stronger. One voice. Just one.

"It's not you," Jack said. "It's the metal."

"Right," you said. "This is not me. I'm over there. I keep forgetting."

"Doctor, what just happened?"

I knew now what had evaded me all this time. The answer to a question I never stopped to ask myself.

"Validium," I said. The idea haunted me.

"You're kidding," Jack said. How did he know?

"The ship," I explained to you. "The living metal. It's Validium. The tiniest fraction of it. Enriched with other metals."

"What's Validium?" you asked.

"It's Time Lord," I said. My responsibility.


	30. Collateral Damage

I wasn't a proper doctor, but I was the next best thing. I thought it best to step in before they'd apply pincers to the nipples just to check whether he was alive or dead. I think I carried a stethoscope in my coat pocket but I luckily had no use for it: Bill was still breathing.

"Good man!" I said, slapping his baffled cheek. "Good man! You lucky, lucky man! Unlucky to be here to begin with, but you might as well be born unlucky. We are talking about Earth after all."

Direct danger had been averted but the war hadn't yet been won. I jumped from group to group to check on both survivors of this weird encounter and I leaped across the puddle of sludge in the middle of the floor. The only visible remains of the Drone which had attacked Buffalo Bill, barring one: you.

We placed the two Amy's side by side for careful examination. Both versions of you looked identical to one another, up to the painted fingernails. We couldn't compare faces, but we had our memories. Luckily. We knew the face that was hidden underneath that mask.

You lifted your arm and, while concentrating, the arm of your real body moved simultaneously and for a moment we could not discern who was the puppet and who was the master.

"This is freaky," you said.

We were crouched over both of you (or should I say the one of you) when Jack finally went straight to business. The mysterious glass box glowed in between us on the floor and the shard of glass was rattling its insides, twitching like it was being zapped with electricity. Like it was alive.

"Doctor, it can't be Validium. Validium's a myth," Jack said.

"So am I," I said.

The others were taking care of Bill and making sure he was okay. Nikola repeated his circling motions three times before settling to linger around the four of us in nervous silence, listening and taking in as many information as he could.

"Doctor, is this a problem?" he asked and I teased them while I was still contemplating several possibilities and scenarios in my mind.

"Possibly," I said. Needs more work.

"I checked my wrist watch to see how much time we had left, while a shadow was contorting around us."

"Doctor," Jack insisted but I had to shush him. 6 giant arms and 2 giant legs were morphing in the dark, stretching out across the vast cold toward the Eiffel Tower for some monstrous hug, eclipsing the night.

Nemo was on the move. His ship was changing shape. More elements from Jules Verne's story were taking shape: we were looking at the giant octopus and all I could do was smile.

"We have to get this to the top," I told Jack and I shoved the glowing glass box into Nikola's hands. Quite rudely.

Jack and the sweat on his brow understood their mission. Here be pirates...

Oh, yes, they were coming. Nemo must've figured out the reversed teleport feed by now.

There was yelling down below. In the silence of the surrounding vacuum of space it was easy to make out the voices that were materializing into being or the footfalls that were making the metal tremble.

Time was running out. All that was left was to take the required components as close to the ship above as possible.

There was up and there was down and all that was really left to us was the lift that was supposed to come back down in the middle.

"Jack?" I said. "Don't look up."

He immediately looked up. "Oh, boy."

"Nope. I can't look at myself. It's too weird," you finally decided, still lying with your back on the dusty ground.

"Too bad, because we're taking her with us," I replied, pulling you back on to your feet. "You'll thank me later."

Distance didn't upset the connection between you and the metal duplicate. Space wasn't the issue here, time was.

You had been more drained by the encounter than you would admit. You were starting to lose the slight control you had over this metal avatar of yourself. The Drone was part of you now, perhaps even too much of a part, tipping the balance no longer in your favour.

What part now was Amy and what part was Nemo, what part was the ship and what part a coldblooded killer?

In the end we're composed of bits and pieces. Take out one vital piece and the body may work around it, adapt anew. Bodies are fragile but memories are more abstract. More like a river. It flows where it can, makes things gel even if they don't want to gel, covers up plotholes in stories to make the storyline flow better.

Humans are pattern-seeking creatures. You seek connections. Sometimes even when there are none. Bridge a gap to ignore the hole. Desperate deep down to fill it.

You didn't walk for long though before staggering again and it was Jack who caught you. You didn't thank him. He tells himself he doesn't need to be thanked, but he does. Everybody does.

"Doctor, what is Validium?" you kept asking but I couldn't stop.

"Come on!" I rallied the troops. I was the only one moving freely. With energy. I felt like the only happy man at a funeral. The sounds downstairs were increasing. The pirates were climbing up the stairs. 340 steps is still a long a lot.

"You good to go?" Jack asked Bill's team. The Sioux Sitting Bull was the first to rise. His gaze pierced the night. He was the first to understand, without words, the need to keep moving. The wind had grown unfavourable. The ground barren. Nemo would never stop hunting us.

They complied and helped Bill to his feet. In passing, Annie asked: "Who are you people?" She didn't want an answer.

Validium. Knowing what the ship was made of didn't exactly change anything about the situation just yet. It only made it that much worse. More questions roamed my mind than there were before.

Validium is supposed to be indestructable. How did the Eiffel Tower die? Scratch that, how did the ship die? And how did it survive in the first place?

I am the last of the Time Lords. Everything of my race, my species, my civilization, my home, has been locked away. Literally timelocked. Something can't go in or out without paying a heavy price. Death, madness, complete and utter destruction or worse...much, much worse.

Some secrets must never be unlocked. The past is a thing of the past. I look to the future. But without the past there is no future. Or at least, that's what I always thought to be true, but maybe the future can restore the past. I don't know. Maybe there's still some semblance of hope...

I keep saying it's impossible, I never try to, because I know I'll someday end up swallowing my own words. The living metal could've never escaped my home planet. Except it did once before. It could've again. Before the timelock. Before the war.

The tiniest drop survived and accumulated more and more metals throughout the universe like a single snowflake rolling down a mountain and becoming an avalanche.

Oh, the avalanche was here. That was undeniable.

"We have to get to the third floor," I said. "And we mustn't teleport there. Jack! Save as much energy as we can. We're going to need it."

"How much?" Jack asked.

"All of it," and I looked up again. "The ship's not going to let us go that easily."

The ship? You mean Nemo.

This is bigger than Nemo. These events are now part of something going back thousands and thousands of years, billions, long before the Earth was even formed, or even your Sun, or even your Milky Way. They were all but rocks swirling in pools of distant starlight in a galactic shooting gallery. Particles met particles and fire met ice. Just a twinkle in the eye of the galaxy.

It was a dangerous place to be. A dangerous time. Conditions were temperamental. Volatile. Survival almost impossible.

It was a time of legends and whispers. Vampires and angels. Of Chaos.

The time when my people created the first TARDIS, by capturing black holes and harnassing the power of supernovas. The first time machine. I've got the very last.

It's often said we're standing on the shoulders of giants. That, if nothing else, is an understatement. The human race this day and age could barely fathom the history that preceeds them. You've barely arrived on the scene and already arrogantly claiming everything started with you or even revolves around you.

Then again, when has the Earth not been part of some cosmic cataclysm? Always on the brink of destruction. Always ending, but rarely never beginning.

That day on the Eiffel Tower destruction met somewhere in the middle. The secret of it all hidden inside a strange box...

Nikola couldn't resist examining it as he held it in his hands. One could only wonder what he truly saw dancing around inside that light. A tiny shard of glass was twitching inside still, one part of it floating, another unable to let go of the bottom. Sometimes I could've sworn I saw tiny surges of lightning strike its sharp edges. Like a Tesla coil, and its inventor was of course standing right beside me.

"See anything you like, Nikola?" I asked him. I bet he could feel the electromagnetic field pulsing through his fingertips. Then came a sudden shudder. The lift above us seemed to rattle and scream as it slowly came down at the beckon of my sonic screwdriver.

It crashed to a slow stop at our level. Luckily intact. The more time we spent in outer space the more the Tower seemed to object to its cold surroundings.

"Going up!" I exclaimed. "Everybody into the lift, please! Things to do, places to be!"

Nemo moved his pieces and now it was my turn. And the question was, would he expect my move?

I was the first to leap inside the lift but then I had to stick my head out to see whether the ship was still changing shape above us. It had horrific forms in the past and would again in the future. If there was still any future left for all of us when all of this would be over.

""I once knew a girl called Trampoline," Jack told you to cheer you up as he helped you into the lift. "She always bounced in and out of trouble."

"Lucky girl," you replied jokingly. "I bet she loved her friends."

"She hated it. She tried to change it to Yo-Yo but the nickname kinda stuck."

"Yo-Yo? How's that any better?"

"She thought it was more romantic."

"What, a puppet on a string?"

"Wherever she went, she'd always come back to me."

"If she's the yo-yo, it sort of implies you're the one doing the throwing, right? And she's all helpless and spinning and under your control. Did she really think this through?"

"Think she does better as Trampoline Girl? Because she's not the one doing the jumping."

"I stand corrected. Wait..."

"AND WE'RE OFF!" I shouted, aiming my sonic screwdriver at the lift controls below the car where the operator should've been sitting. Except I had no need for a manual kickstart. I've gone wireless.

And you know me. I can't stop thinking. Jack's story was echoing through my mind, because I heard it, but then again I hear a lot of things and only so much actually sinks in straight away. Some of it simmers for a while. A lot of it will never find resolution.

I'm a Time Lord, not a robot, but I sensed something nonetheless. Something was wrong about this car.

I started pacing, tapping the end of my sonic screwdriver against my forehead while trying to gauge everyone else's reactions. Are you that stupid or am I really that clever?

**Don't flatter yourself, Doctor.**

Something was wrong. Remember what happened in that very lift? I haven't told you yet, have I?

**What? Bernárd went down. Wait, what happened to him?**

Something good. Something bad. Something that had to happen.

**Did he die?**

Almost.

It was the first thing we saw when we reached the middle section, while the pirates were climbing up and the ship was reaching down towards us to close the trap.

I saw his silhouette as the lift proceeded up, standing at the centre of the narrow bridge towards the other lift car. The entire scene reeked of wrongness.

I desperately pushed aside the metal fences and was the first to step outside the lift. Bernárd was there, completely silent, and I thought of calling out to him, but I didn't.

Then I saw his body lying behind him, almost like a physical 3-dimensional shadow. I couldn't tell if he was dead or alive.

"No, don't step any closer!" I told the others. I used my body to push you back. To shield you from its gaze. It was the final Drone. At least I thought it was.

"It's Nemo!" Jack shouted and shot at the Bernárd duplicate at point blank rage. I yelled for him to stop. Violence would only feed it.

"Doctor, what is it?" you asked. "What is Validium?"

But how could I possibly tell you? I had to start from the beginning. The Dark Times. The Rise of Gallifrey.

There was a war, Amy. Once upon a time. Between my people and the vampires. The Great Vampires. Colossal grey creatures that ravaged universes and drained planets dry. They came to our part of the galaxy, some say in migration, others say it was an infestation. Always thirsty, never stopping. So many lives lost.

The tribes of Gallifrey fought them for centuries, scattered throughout the universe in a time when only the soothsayers could predict the next onslaught of the Vampires.

That was until the day the Time Lords took control. There was a revolution and the followers of Pythia were overthrown. A triumvirate of scientists established a new order and reclaimed Gallifrey as its capital. Together they changed the fate of the galaxy forever.

It was Omega who powered the rise of the Time Lords, fueled the bowships that would defeat the Great Vampires and establish Gallifrey as the most powerful civilization the universe had ever known.

And it was Rassilon who lead our armies, who created the weapons that would defeat them, for the only way the Vampires could be defeated was by stabbing them in the hearts with steel bolts, to destroy it or even encase it in metal.

Except for one, the Great Vampires were finally driven into extinction and the war ended, but through its advances Rassilon and Omega had created the perfect weapon. The ultimate defence. Validium. Living metal. Constructed for a single purpose and that was to destroy.

A sufficient quantity of it could destroy galaxies, defeat battle fleets or even inspire conflict.

I've encountered it before. It called itself Nemesis then. Validium parts that were never supposed to leave Gallifrey somehow found its way into the universe to wreck destruction. The tiniest drop of sentient metal and this batch barely has a voice. But it has consciousness.

Nemo had its subconscious beamed into his head for five long years trapped inside the mask, spoonfed death and destruction in the womb. Who can blame him for turning out as he did?

**This isn't just a story anymore, is it Doctor?**

Validium was just as big a part of my past as Jack was. One of the last remaining relics of my race. And for a while I wondered whether this would be the only legacy of the Time Lords.

Death and destruction.

But somehow the most dangerous weapon in the universe found its way into the hands of children.

A duke in Austria takes the wrong turn into the street where his assassin happened to be eating a sandwhich and history is changed forever. His death lead to nations signing treaties with nations and like a line of dominoes falling lead to boys fighting and dying in trenches and healing in hospitals.

And one day there'll be some unexploded bomb buried underneath a playground waiting to go off.

Look at them, Amy. Hear them. The victims of this war."

The floor shook. A surprise attack in the middle of the night sent a division of young boys over the top and out of the trenches, but first came the artillery. Bombs were flying like fireworks in the distance. Amy used to welcome the sound and love the countdown every New Year's Eve to when the sky would light up with fire (and her aunt would always ruin it every year by repeating how she thought New Year's Eve was the perfect time to murder someone. Any gunshot would be believed to be fireworks).

But there was no countdown here. No warning.

These were not toys, these were weapons. Every explosion could mean another death. The very thought made Amy's heart miss a beat. She closed her eyes and tried not to listen to the screams in the other beds or the people who could use her bed or her treatment more than her.

She knew the Doctor was listening. Whenever he paused she could see him thinking.

"Doctor," Amy said. "The Saloccian treatment. Couldn't we share it? Couldn't we help someone? Anyone? Just this once?"

He bit his lip as he got out of bed and lingered for a bit at the edge.

"Who?" he asked. "Out of everyone could you really pick just one? Out of all this suffering? Should we look for fathers, lovers or shellshocked young boys? Who would you choose?"

He rubbed his brow, trying to clear an imaginary headache. Amy waited for an apology for his grumpy behaviour that wouldn't come this time.

"Can anyone really shoulder the responsibility of life and death like this, appoint himself arbiter of destiny, deciding who gets to live and who gets to die, on a whim?"

"People die, Doctor. You said so yourself. People always die, but sometimes...Sometimes people get to live."

Another pause. She hated the pause because they let in the screams. "Doctor, are you crying?"

"No, Amy. I'm thinking."

"Looks a lot like crying to me. It's just a story, right? It's not real? Nothing to cry about."

"Then why are you crying?" the Doctor said and threw a clever smile back through damp eyes.

Amy touched the inside corner of her right eye with a careful ring finger but was too late to stop the tear rolling down her cheek. Confused, she tried to cover it up.

He loved the fact that she cared.

"It's your fault. It's your dreary story."

"Dreary?" the Doctor said.

"Every story needs a romance, yet you've been talking to me for hours without even a hint of sexual tension."

"What?" the Doctor spoke baffled. "I'm not a Hollywood screenwriter! I'm just telling a story. And you're a really bad audience."

"Don't shoot the messenger. Of course. It's your story. Love doesn't even cross your mind, Doctor. You're too busy trying to be Space Gandalf. Saving the world, but what about the girl? Can't she have a bit of fun?"

"I just gave you superpowers. What more do you want?"

"You know what I want. A little bit of romance in the middle of a world war."

She patted the bed as a welcoming sign for him to lie down in his previous spot. It was still warm.

"Don't we all?" he said. Then he continued his story.

"All these people on the Eiffel Tower were victims. Them and everyone on Earth who would about to be consumed by their own history. They were collateral damage.

The after-effects of a forgotten earthquake would shatter the world all over again and everything feared to fall into its cracks into the dark. The silence.

A lengthy speech wouldn't dissuade the living metal of a thousand year old grudge, but it didn't stop me trying.

"I am the Doctor," I told it. "I am a Time Lord. The last, actually. Can you hear me? Can you understand? Oh, I bet you can. Because you know, don't you?"

I could see it in its fabricated eyes. Oh, it had been my intention to save Bernárd, not to drive him towards his death, but how could I have possibly known? Why didn't he just go up like all the others? Why did he have to go back?

Why do people do anything? Because they want to live.

"I'm so sorry, Bernárd," I said, with the tiniest part of me hoping he could hear. "I tried to save you. I really did."

All I could do was stare at this metal reflection. This metal imitation. It was no substitute for the real thing. But it was almost as if it actually listened.

The lift must've stalled as the metal invaded and for a while as he gazed into his own reflection beaming off the silver skin of the monster that was about to kill him, he must've seen so much else.

The girlfriend that got away, perhaps. His father sacrificing his life for his. The life he could never have.

Children are always told the good will be rewarded and the bad will be punished. They're told that the universe is fair, but how could you still believe that when you gaze into the eyes of certain death? What could this boy have possibly done to deserve this fate? Now, really?

"But you know, don't you? You know!" I told the Drone. Bernárd's duplicate was watching me. Waiting. For something. But then I realized something.

**What?**

I wasn't the one linked to this thing. I wasn't the one it was trying to connect to. It was you.

"We could win this," I said. "Amy!"

I pulled you from the crowd of ten and told you what was at stake. You were about to become part of Time Lord history. The woman who persuaded living death to care.

"You can do this!" I said.

"I can't. If I absorb anymore I'll lose it. It'll absorb me."

"I don't want you to absorb it. I want you to think. Think, Amy. Reach out to it. Telling it how we feel won't get us anywhere, but we can actually make it feel like we feel. Feel, like you feel. You are linked."

"How do I feel?"

"That's not the point!" I said. "Look it in the eyes and say it telepathically. Show it in your mind. Feel it with your heart."

Jack took your hand and with a nod to me he guided you to where you were needed. Where history needed you to be. And you connected.

"Think of your favourite place on Earth," I whispered into your ear, with strategically placed words. "Now think how you would feel if it were gone. Plucked out of the air, not with a bang but with a whimper. All of that beauty. All of those memories. Erased. Think of the people that will die if we don't make it to the top...think of Paris...think of Leadworth...remember, Amy.  
Amy, what are you thinking of?"

The duplicate Bernárd started yelling. And crying. A thought had impacted it more than others, affected it like nothing had ever done before.

"Think of poor Bernárd, Amy," I continued whispering. "Destined to die. He just lost his father to the dark. He lost everything. Everything but hope."

The Drone looked upon the body of Bernárd at its feet when it turned. It understood now. Then it suddenly stopped to look at us.

"Think of all those people aboard the ship," I concluded as I aimed my speech at the metal. "Trapped inside those masks, living a half-life, an enslaved life, waiting in the wings...Feel them."

You closed your eyes and thought of all those things and more. You forced yourself to feel it, tapping into parts of yourself you never felt before. You started crying. And the metal did too.

All the damage could still be undone. You, Jack, Bernárd, Gustave, Bill, Nemo, Earth...

The Drone then suddenly ceased to function. It dropped dead beside the other Bernárd. And you kneeled beside it to absorb the tiny particle of Validium that was still left inside it.

"Did it work?" you asked. "Did we make a difference?"

"You never know," I said and I couldn't help but look up. I kneeled beside the other Bernárd to check his pulse. He was alive.

While Nikola and I helped him get back up to his feet on the narrow walkway so that others could cross, he noticed his own body lying beside him. There were scorchmarks all over his duplicate's chest where Jack's blasterfire hit it. It was dead.

"I'm fine," he said, drowsily. He was bruised where the Drone had taken him down. "I thought I was going to die. I thought I couldn't."

"Time can be rewritten. Time can adapt. If you had died right now it wouldn't have changed a thing. Ironically. You can die now, you can die later, you could've died before."

And that's when it struck him, when Bernárd gazed upon his identical counterpart again and deduced the obvious.

"But I don't have to die!" he exclaimed overjoyed. The wounds didn't matter. He would've jumped in the air and almost fallen to his death celebrating his survival.

When he kept pointing I started to notice it too. The resemblance was uncanny. The dead Drone looked identical to the dead Bernárd they found at the beginning of this story. What if...

"A classic case of mistaken identity," I said sober. I wanted to believe, but there were still parts of the story missing. I smiled nonetheless. "Sometimes things aren't what they seem!"

"But that means they were wrong! You were wrong, Doctor! I can live! I don't have to die!"

"Yes," I said.

At the other end of the platform Jack approached you while you were glowing. That's what Validium does when it recognises itself. It's how I recognised it.

Two girls were carrying your original, real self into the next lift and you were keen on letting them know you'd kick their bums if they'd ever drop you. How like you, eh?

"What did you think of," Jack asked. "to make the Drone sympathize with you?"

"You know, the things the Doctor said."

"You're a terrible liar."

"It's kind of personal," you said. "It's from when I was little. It's pathetic, really."

"Try me," he said to you as he closed his hands over yours. The metal warmed.

"I was a kid and the Doctor promised he'd take me with him. He'd be back in five minutes."

"Let me guess. He didn't show up."

"I waited all night. I waited my entire life."

"Yeah, I kind of know how that feels."

"He came back though," you added. "He found me."

"Do you love him?" Jack asked.

"What?"

"The Doctor. Do you love him?"

Time was running out. We had to keep moving. So I shouted over to you: "Amy! Jack!"

Perhaps it was because you knew I was watching. Perhaps it was just a sly way of avoiding the question, but you puckered your lips and kissed him.

It filled a gap you never knew was there before.

**Did I make you jealous?**

Not exactly. But you certainly made me proud.


	31. Awakening

"Hold my hand."

The bedsheet slid gently from her feet and exposed the newborn cells to the cold light. Dust danced in the illuminated air. Cries for help stifled any meaning of achievement.

"Careful. New legs don't grow on trees. Nor do second chances."

She stumbled. Her foot was pale as the sheet it used to hide under.

"Doctor, it's numb," Amy said.

"It's supposed to be. Be grateful. You could've been in some terrible pain..."

"As opposed to what?"

"Shift the weight!" the Doctor's reflexes kicked in when Amy was about to buckle and fall. "Careful! It's brand new!"

He left Amy at the bedside to cling to the side like a dog afraid of water clinging to the edge of a pool.

It didn't feel real. It felt like plastic, like somebody else's leg. Outside the confines of her secure bed her confidence waned, but her determination did not. She could do this. At least she thought she could.

"This isn't happening," she groaned. Time went too slowly. Sometimes the curtains that cut through her world seemed to close in on her, but she closed her eyes to everything that went on outside of them.

They were all dead. They were all suffering, but they were all dead. In her time.

In her time this was history. And sometimes history can feel all too unreal, until the day you find yourself part of it.

Amy felt like she could wake up at any second from a deep sleep. The slow passage of time only made the nightmare worse. In movies you would get a montage here to indicate a passage of time. If this was a movie it would've skipped this part. This horrifying slow part. But that's also what history really is and what being part of history means. Going slow.

The Doctor simply hit and ran. She preferred that strategy. No fuss. No pain.

"I want to get out of here."

The outskirts of her vision started sparkling, like pixels in a computer desktop that were malfunctioning and spreading like a colourful cancer. Her head was all fuzzy and light and a cold spread down her body. More numbness. Until she couldn't see. Too light.

She collapsed beside the bed where the Doctor luckily caught her in time.

"Dear, oh dear," he said, and he threw the crutches he had procured on the bed beside her. "And not a moment too soon. Are you okay?"

"I fainted," Amy said, embarassed that she was caught in one of her weakest moments. "I do that sometimes. Especially if you cut off my legs!"

She couldn't look him in the eyes. Especially now that there was this light directly behind his head. She could barely see past his silhouette and the sparkling pixels were still there in the corner of her eyes. The bed was uncomfortable and not to mention smelly. She couldn't stand to be so vulnerable. What a damsel in distress she'd become.

"Take me home, Doctor," she said. "Please."

But they couldn't just yet. Not until morning. The TARDIS was still out of range. A world war was standing between them and their spaceship and that doesn't happen every day.

He felt the clammy cold as he put a hand to her forehead. She was sweating.

"It hurts, Doctor."

"No, it doesn't," he replied solemnly. "But you want it to."

He threw the sheet back over her, tucked her in and started gently massaging her leg to cause the blood to start flowing again.

"We're all right, Amy," the Doctor said while bombs were dropping in the distance somewhere in the fields of France. His eyes were wandering to their respective corners. "We're going to be all right..."

The smell of rain crept into the hospital's creaking hardwood floors, carried by the wind from distant muddy fields with a hint of garlic. It's France, after all.

Every painful moment was pivotal. It's what makes them meaningful. It's what makes them hurt.

The sad man with the box finally sat on the edge of Amy's bed, pondering.

"The bad days are just as big a part of life as the good days," he told a feverish Amy. The bowtie tightened around his ancient neck.

He checked the numerical face of his wrist watch more out of habit than necessity. The timepiece had no hands, yet the Doctor looked away from it knowing exactly what time it was.

"Shadow's only a small and passing thing. All moments are."

"How does your story end, Doctor?" Amy asked, shivering. "Do I get a happy ending?"

The Doctor cracked a smile. She wanted a distraction, so he'd be happy to give her one.

"Where was I? Oh, yes," the Doctor said. "A kiss. But mostly, an uncomfortable silence in the lift, begging me to comment:

"So, you two kissed?" I asked both you and the good captain standing on either side of me.

**Can't you go into a little bit more detail with the kiss?**

Oh, I knew you'd be a shipper!

"I can't even leave you two alone for two whole seconds," I told you two. "Rabbits..."

"My lips. My business," you said, teasing. Probably rubbing it in that I rejected you before. Touchy. You are so obvious sometimes it's not even funny anymore.

**Don't taunt me, Doctor. Not now.**

Sorry. Sorry. Only trying to recapture the energy of the scene.

**It's you who's rather quick to skip the whole kissing scene. I bet you can't stand the thought of seeing me with another bloke.**

Well, FYI, I think of you and other blokes all the time!

**I bet you do.**

That came out wrong.

**Are you fixing me up with anyone? Is that why you're telling this story?**

I'm fixing you a brand new leg. I'm not an extraterrestrial matchmaker! I don't do love anymore.

**Why not?**

Can I tell my story now? I've almost reached the ending and it's really good. But every time I think I'm close to it some other good idea pops up and occupies an entire chapter. It's not a bad thing, it's just annoying. Yes, there's a downside to being this brilliant.

**Oh, please...**

You see, they were waiting for us all this time. Upstairs. Nemo's pirates had took those that had already made it to the top hostage and they were standing around, teeth bare and knives put to the necks of the innocent, as some horrible surprise party I didn't have any time for.

So I sent them back where they came from.

"Too easy!" I cried out as I reversed the teleportation feed again with a flick of the sonic and sent the pirates flying in blazes of bright blue light back up toward the ship. "Come on! You can do better than that! Seriously, it's like they're not even trying. Hello, again!"

The hostages had never been so happy to see me. "No time to waste though, but rest assured I've got a plan!"

"Not a good one," you said. But that's because I already told you what it was.

"Criticism will have to wait too!" I said.

"You always say that."

"And I'm always short on time!" I replied. "My idea has to work. In fact, it already has worked. The Earth's dying in the past because it did work. In the future. But we can fix it. It's better to say you're sorry than to ask permission. At least that's what they always told me."

"Doctor, it's the end of the world," Jack said. "Doesn't hurt to be a little careful."

"What's life without a little risk?" I joked and I breathed in deeply. "Smell. That. Air!"

It was the last chance to abort. Last chance to think about it. We were about to risk everyone in the history of humanity and beyond and change the face of the universe just to save fifty lives. Just to solve a puzzle. Could I do it? I had already done it. But could I do it again for the first time?

"You don't even know how it works!" you rightly pointed out. True, the box's properties were still a mystery to me.

"I don't need to," I said. "It has worked. In the future. And Nemo's used it for fuel for decades. Perhaps even centuries. All we have to do is change a few plugs!"

"And destroy the world! Doctor!" Jack ephasized once again as if repeating it would make his argument better. Maybe I should've listened.

For every problem there's a solution. Every door has a key. But there was no way of knowing what's behind each door. Whether it holds salvation or destruction. I was taking a gamble, perhaps asking too much, but I did promise. I did. I make promises all the time.

Sometimes I'm just the right person in the right time and place. Just the right key for just the right lock. A skeleton key that fits any lock, any situation, any time or place, past, future or present, but sometimes you just have to bash that door down. Luckily, I'm a locksmith. Lucky, lucky, lucky.

Of course, there's nothing lucky about a causality loop. Or is there?

"Come on, everyone!" I said. "Breathe in deep! Soak up as much as you can! Jack?"

"You're a genius," he immediately said upon realizing and he quickly had his vortex manipulator soak up all the energy it could. The pieces were falling into place.

Nikola could see it with his naked eyes. The energy was spilling out into the universe above us, brooding like a bottled lightningstorm in between the Tower and the Ship. It's the Blinovitch Limitation Effect.

That's when the same object from two or multiple different points in its own timestream touch or are in close proximity to each other in the same space there's a discharge of energy, sometimes mild, sometimes dangerous. This time we were counting on the latter.

"What's going on? Are we destroying the world or saving it?" Bernárd asked.

"Finally! You're catching up!" I told him with a pat on the back. "I told you I could save you. Nemo's basically handed us all the ingredients for our great escape and there's nothing he can do to stop us."

Then I saw Bernárd's hands. They were shaking.

"This is real, Bernárd," I said, clutching the back of his neck and looking straight into his eyes. Such vibrant colours.

Most of the people around me were still going through the motions, living by the script of this terrible nightmare they're forced to endure, all expecting to wake up in their comfy beds any minute now, awaking from some bad dream.

They were looking at us as if we were enacting the weirdest play they'd ever seen. The play's the thing.

"I know," Bernárd said.

"Take control of your own life!"

"Doctor, when I saw my own reflection in the Drone's eyes it felt like waking up. I'm here. I'm okay. I'm not going to die."

"And neither is your father," I said to him. "We can still save him!"

"How?"

"We're going to fly the Eiffel Tower back home."

The glass box in Nikola's hand started glowing more and more as we headed to the top. The more Nemo's ship reached down towards the Tower the more it was helping our cause. Just a little bit closer...

"What are you doing, Doctor?" Jack asked. I had expected the former Time Agent to feel a little bit apprehensive about lending his vortex manipulator to the cause.

"We need to divert the energy the vortex manipulator is soaking up and use it to fuel the box. I need to expand its radius to include the entire structure of the Eiffel Tower, which means I'm going to need every drop of energy I can get my hands on. Any questions?"

"Doctor," Simon interrupted. "As the representative of LONGBOW I cannot allow you to continue. You're risking the lives of everyone on the planet! Everyone in history! You do not have the authority to make this decision!"

I stopped sonicking Jack's vortex manipulator and straightened my back. I watched him swallow and sweat in my presence. His complaints stopped being fun a long while ago now.

"Someone has to," I said. "I'm the Lord of Time. I've saved the Earth more times than I can count and I'm going to save it again. Are you going to stand in my way?"

I looked from eye to eye to see what kind of man he really was.

"Your exploits have jeopardized my homeworld long enough! I'm taking a stand! One day you're going to slip up. One day your mistakes will cost us our world and it'll be your fault, Doctor. This is our world, not yours. This is not your decision to make."

"Are you challenging my authority?" I said.

Simon shivered. "Yes. You time-travellers have tampered with history long enough. I am not going to risk the destruction of the whole of creation to save a mere fifty lives. There has to be another way."

"Even if it means your own life?" I asked.

After a hesitation he closed his eyes and nodded. He was a brave man.

"Fine," I said. "Have it your way, Simon from Brussels."

"I work in Brussels, but I'm not from there. I'm Dutch."

"Oh, are you now?" I said.

It took a lot of guts to stand up to me like that. Few that dared before left untarnished. He was right, though. This was humanity's decision to make. Maybe it was time for a vote.

"Doctor, they're not ready," Jack whispered into my ear.

"They have to start somewhere," I said. So the situation was explained once again and they all voted while time was running out.

"Remember the choice Nemo gave you. Now consider mine," I stated my case before them. "It's either this or death."

"Death of only fifty or death of the whole human race!" Simon said. "Such a decision must never be taken lightly."

"I can do this," I said. "But you're going to have to trust me."

"But we don't even know who you are!" Annie Oakley cried. Claude deBussy voiced the same concerns.

"He's the Doctor," Bernárd said.

"The man classified by Torchwood as the most dangerous man to walk the Earth!" Simon said. "I am not being unreasonable here!"

"What's Torchwood?" someone asked.

Jack stepped forward, assuming his place at my side once again. "I'm Torchwood. And I trust this man with my life."

"I'm Torchwood," you cut in. "I trust this man too."

You took your place on my other side.

"I'm Torchwood," Nikola Tesla spoke, much to our surprise. Then came another:

"I'm Torchwood too," Bernárd said.

I doubt they really knew what it was, but it worked. It caught on and spread. A tiny spark becoming a flame and then a roaring fire. More and more stood up and followed their example.

"I am Torchvood," Vilhelm Bjerknes said.

"I'm Torchwood." Buffalo Bill said when he regained his voice finally and his men followed his lead. "We're Torchwood."

Sitting Bull the Sioux was silent no more. "I am Torchwood."

And I couldn't help be teary-eyed. There was hope. There was always hope.

Here we stood we bunch of cowards. I clapped and rubbed my hands together. My voice embarassingly sore. I had to clear it twice.

"I'm Spartacus. And who says democracy is dead?" I said while Jack consoled the agreeable Simon. The Flying Dutchman. Ha.

"Now, let's get to work!"

In the night sky above us the tentacles of the giant morphing metal octopus were becoming dangerously close. What was Nemo waiting for?

Back on Earth time and space were spilling across the fault lines and bleeding into each other and the solar system was slowly freezing into place. The effects were even reaching Pluto.

Time ánd space.

We caused it to happen in the future, but the effects rippled back in time. We are the only ones who could've caused it, therefore I was justified in assuming we are there at the heart of the storm in the future when it happens. When we cause it. Our escape triggers the event.

With me so far?

Because we're already there in the future and all timezones are merging, we can effectively use the mysterious glass box's spatial overlapping properties here in the present to transport the entire Eiffel Tower structure into the future. You're right: two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time, but the walls between timezones are gone; there's nothing to stop you from simply leapfrogging into the past and future, because they're all becoming condensed in the same space, the same time. No need for a time-machine anymore. Or a timepiece.

To prevent the Eiffel Tower from landing atop a future Eiffel Tower we were going to use Jack's vortex manipulator device to nudge us a few feet backwards into the past, where it can safely become the future.

First space, then time. I even astonish myself sometimes. Now that's just the easy part. The tricky bit is what comes after.

"Doctor, I'm scared," you told me as you lay on the floor, clutching my hand.

"Why? You're not dying. You're returning."

"I can't go back."

"You're going to have to," I said. "This body was never meant to last. It's a cheap knock-off. You have to let it go!"

"What if the Drone takes over? Kills the lot of you? Then what?"

"It won't."

"How do you know that?"

"Trust me."

Jack placed the glowing glass box in your hands first and then took over from me, sitting by your side.

"I knew you'd be trouble from the moment I saw you," he said.

"As if you're a saint," you replied, making Jack chuckle.

"I'm really not, you know," he said.

Your real body was placed beside you. The mask was still covering your face.

You took a deep breath and focused on the warmth of Jack's hand.

"I think I'm ready now," you finally said and closed your eyes.

Jack looked over his shoulder and nodded at me. Timing was everything. We had to shut down your active connection with the Validium (in favour of a non-damaging passive connection) to prevent your mind from being completely ripped apart when the inevitable transportation would happen.

I think we had gathered enough energy from the ship's hull floating above us in the dark. The glass box had never glowed this brightly before. I remembered back to the start of the day when it seemed dead and inactive. Maybe the wound had finally healed and our actions had only ripped it open again. The energy was bleeding into the box where it was contained. For now.

Six minutes to midnight.

This was really happening. You were waking up; not falling asleep. It felt counter-intuitive, but it was true. You felt like you were slowly sinking deeper and deeper and we saw your hands turn to ash and then bubbling into warped silver.

The metal melted around the glass box as we predicted, giving it a secure position for the launch. All systems go.

The box was working and created its dimensional hub above the decaying Drone.

I had the vortex manipulator and I diverted more and more power toward the box, causing the dimensional hub to grow beyond its proportions and engulf the entire room and soon the entire structure.

I had not yet detected the fatal flaw in my design.

Nemo was patient. Nemo was precise. Nemo wouldn't just ignore a glaring hole in his security like this. He would've investigated. I should've known. I should've foreseen it.

He used my own strategy against me. His Achilles Heel became my own. And he had known all along. He had been waiting all this time. Listening in through you, Amy, and through the metal.

He was waiting on the other side and I practically opened the door for him to get in. No teleports needed. An army of ghosts descended upon us, invaded through a veil of fading light in the wake of their leader. They came through the dimensional hub as I had before the moment I activated the box.

The hostages screamed but there was nothing we could do. Jack was knocked aside. Nikola and I were forced to our knees. The pirates were merciless and cruel when they were permitted to be. Blind dedication to their master's empty series of successors had made them heartless and cold to anything but a direct order.

I looked over to you hoping to see some sign of life but your hand lay motionless beside you.

The vortex manipulator had been forced out of my hands and on to the ground but the energy that had been invested could not be undone.

Silhouetted against the bright light of the mysterious box stood Captain Nemo; clueless to the fact that he'd already lost and he just didn't know it yet.


	32. The Play's The Thing

The tide had come in.

Hopes were being shattered over and over again into increasingly tinier pieces. It seemed this band of desperate people trapped in the dark atop the Eiffel Tower were doomed to see even their tiniest specs of hope trampled beneath a boot.

Now there were not enough pieces left. No more glue.

It was my mistake. First space, then time (although it's a little bit more complicated than that). The dimensional hub had reached Nemo's ship first while the Earth remained out of range. The pirates had leaped aboard almost too easily because I opened the doors.

All atop the Eiffel Tower were once again the victims of circumstance when all they ever wanted to do was visit the World Fair. What they got was so much more. The performance of a lifetime.

Two timezones now collided inside the dimensional hub, warring for dominance over the Eiffel Tower's third platform, even though only one seemed to be present. But looks can be deceiving.

The Khamorath and the Eiffel Tower were reunited in a perversion of twisted and broken rules.

A thousand splinters in time were burning aboard Nemo's ship: the same object in different points of its timestream affected retro-actively by the power invested into the oldest, last and present box. They were amplifying its effects, strengthening the connection through time and space.

"NO!"

The pirates would've hacked down all those who showed signs of resistance. Of hope.

Simon fell first. The man of principle defended the helpless against the Rygellian barbarians and they struck him down without mercy. I looked. He wasn't dead.

In the chaos I couldn't see and couldn't help. Jack fired at the first pirates he could see before the shots were returned. They did not miss and he fell to the ground beside you without a hint of life in his once joyous eyes.

Nikola's knees were dug into the dust, pressed against the metal, while the thugs smirked. He was grabbed by the neck and pushed down whenever he tried to look up.

Oh, Nemo was clever. Not as clever as me, mind you. He just copied off me like all the clever ones do, but it wasn't clever enough. Except sometimes you don't need to be clever. You can be lucky, or very very strong.

They'd tried to stop me. Simon tried to stop me. Torchwood tried to stop me. They were founded on that very intent. And sometimes I need someone to stop me. Now it was too late.

Lightning in a box lit up the air around Nemo and even struck the metal of the Tower. One flash. Then another.

"You really thought you could escape? Take over MY ship? You don't know who you're dealing with!" Nemo spoke.

This man was out of his depth. He had no idea what was going on in front of him. The glass box at his feet was burning a hole in the fabric of time and space, ticking away like a time bomb ready to go off, and he ignored it.

He wasn't remotely important in the slightest, although he wanted to be, to proudly follow in the footsteps of the captains who had steered their ships toward self-destruction. He and all the others were the copy of a man who never existed. A life maimed beyond recognition.

He was shouting for attention at the top of his lungs. Because this was his moment. His birthday.

Reborn from the ship's womb, he had taken over the role of Captain Nemo and was chewing away at the scenery, elongating his stride and savouring his silences to milk his victory for everything it was worth.

He would've been a really, really bad Shakespearian actor.

"You lose, Doctor," he continued. As if we had been playing a game all this time. Our reality had been his entertainment.

"I have you by the throat. There's nowhere to run now."

"Very good," I told him. "We get the point. You won, we lost, you're brilliant and we're stupid, but can we just skip the villain monologue this time? The world's going to end and I really don't want to miss it...ooh, pointy swords."

The pirate beside me who was sticking a cutlass between my breeches stank of bad teeth and fishbreath. How could they smell of fish? The universe isn't an ocean.

Nemo growled with restless teeth, churning. Eager to bite. And here's me, playing the part of bait!

They don't like it when you don't take them seriously. Villains are romantic like that. They want countdowns and superweapons and really bad puns. But what they really want is someone to listen to them. An audience to watch them be clever.

The pirates laughed at their designated cues. I turned to heard Bernárd cry a muffled scream. A hand was put over his face while another in the form of a hook skimmed his uniform as a silent, hovering threat. When the boy saw me he resisted and the hook dug into the back of Bernárd's left hand. The wound formed an all too familiar mark.

"Not a single one dies today, Nemo," I told him. "Not one. Do you hear me?"

"You don't tell me what to do," he growled back, haunting every step with a scowl. "This is my ship. And I know you tried to steal it!"

"Not. Everything. Is about. You!" I yelled. Riled. Incredulous. The pirates shoved me back into my place.

Nemo brooded, kneeling beside you almost to see whether you were injured. He hovered his hand over your mask as if he wanted to sense your aura and I couldn't tell whether he was gloating or mourning.

"Only I can commandeer my ship," Nemo went on, musing, performing while the audience were hooked. Literally hooked. "Only Nemo can control it. And only one can be captain."

"Mind control," I whispered, working it out. He was still in sync with the ship. And the ship was still in sync with him. And with you.

He took one final look at the dead Captain Jack Harkness, unaware of his secret (and unaware of mine). The Captain Jack Harkness who was once the partner of the man he could've been. And had been. The man he killed.

"You're paranoid, Nemo. Look at yourself!" I told him. "Your predecessor was the one with the brains. He was the one with the plans. Your predecessor was the one who defied the Ethereal Shadow. You're just his echo. You don't even know what's inside that box!"

"I don't need to know!"

Cognitive dissonance. He can't know so he pretends he doesn't want to. How quaint.

"But I bet you know, don't you?" I asked, turning to my captors. "You can tell me. What's in there? Where's all that energy coming from, eh? Is it dangerous?"

"YOU WILL SPEAK TO ME!" Nemo hollered. He didn't impress me.

"You'll have to wait your turn just like everyone else."

He pointed his gun at me from a distance and I touched my chin. I'm always more aware of my chin when I yell. Then he slowly closed the gap between us. Just like the universe was trying to do right now.

By provoking this unstable man I was putting the lives of all those hostages at risk, and yet despite the danger, despite everything, I couldn't have felt more excited doing it anyway. Sorry if that makes me a bad person.

The surface of Pluto beneath us was already frozen but now a web of light seemed to crawl around it, a trail of frozen motions and ghostly spins fading into being until the planet simply stopped, but the trail continued. Space was freezing, stopping, time was coming to a dead stop as all time zones were being compressed into a single present. A single second.

We didn't see the flittering shades of brown zooming around us through the silence and vacuum of outer space until one creature dared to fly closer. Its screech petrified all on the Tower.

"What was that?" Bill cried out before being nudged with the butt of a rifle by the pirate that was guarding him. He too checked the night sky for movement.

"Reapers," I told Nemo. "Creatures from the Time Vortex. They sense the future. They're drawn to temporal hot spots and damaged time/space. The universe is bleeding and they're here to clean the wound."

A whirlpool of energy was eminating from the little glass box on the floor,steaming into the air around it, before finally escaping into the universe.

"They devour paradoxes. Consume. Which makes you dinner."

"You don't scare me," Nemo growled, a vicious tongue.

"Then you're an idiot," I said. "Time and space are crumpling all around us. The history of the human race is imploding. Do you even care? Or am I expecting too much from a man who can only care for objects?"

"BE QUIET!"

"No. You don't control everything. In fact, you don't control anything. You don't even control yourself."

"Silence!"

It was working.

"Do you even know who you are? Captain Nemo was once a legend. A great man with a great vision. A mighty traveller. A King. Or was that just a story?"

"I did not ask to become this," Nemo spoke.

"Then stop. Just stop. STOP. No-one can change the past. But they can change the future!"

"I can change the past and I have."

"Yes, you've mutilated yourself beyond comprehension. Do you even know who you are anymore? Who you are supposed to be? Once long ago, there must've been a boy called Nemo. You must've had a childhood, a home, moments in your life that aren't changed. Moments that define you. All of you."

All those that were dreaming. Inside the womb of his living metal ship. Alone in the dark. But never really alone.

"Those moments were erased," he spoke. He clung to his hatred, spoonfed to him inside the mask for all these years. He thrived on pain and misery.

"Oh, I have seen myself. This is all I can be. This is all I want to be. They all thought they could be different. Every single one of them. They were wrong. All roads lead here. Lead to ME. When they awake from the darkness they will be just the same. They will be Nemo."

"Let's put that to the test," I said.

If he'd wanted to end it, he could've abandoned us. He could've shut down our oxygen supply or simply destroy our pressure, but he didn't. Why?

At some level, I think Nemo wanted someone to stop him. He wanted someone to end his suffering.

He's a caged monster lashing out at whatever's nearest his cage, immersed in his own little world, not interested in world domination or universal destruction. Just his own selfish, sollipsistic little bubble.

Accept who you are not and start from there.

"I am the Doctor," I said. "And I challenge you. Oh, this brings back memories..."

The pirates laughed loudly and Nemo laughed along with them in a gesture of mockery.

"I assume the Rygellian laws of combat still apply?" I added.

"No-one here recognises your claim for command! We reject your claim, Doctor!" Nemo laughed.

"Oh, I understand," I said. "I don't have any rightful claim for the captaincy...but they do. Because tell me, Nemo, if you're the only one who can helm your ship, then who's flying it?"

I pointed up with a single finger. Above us in space the living ship's metal tentacles were retracting. The ship was drifting away from the Tower.

You should've seen the look on Nemo's face when he realized what had happened. A mutiny.

"It's the eve of the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution," I said. "I'd call it a perfect tribute."

Have you worked it out yet?

"How are you doing this?" Nemo yelled, pressing his gun into my face. A desperate act of a desperate man.

"A magician never reveals his secrets," I said. "But this isn't my trick. It's yours. By giving Amelia Pond your mask. It's a wonder she hasn't begun redecorating. Because that's all your ship needed. A woman's touch."

Nemo turned to look at you lying on the floor. The mask was beginning to loosen and slip from your face like jello.

"Are we getting it now?" I said to anyone within range. "Is anyone paying attention? THIS IS A REVOLUTION! A thousand Nemoes are now free aboard your ship to do WHATEVER THEY LIKE and they're taking over. They're overthrowing the system! They're taking what is theirs and I hope for your sake they feel inclined to share."

We had reached out to that vessel of pain and the Validium heard us. It felt for us. It felt because you did, Amy. Now it let go of its prisoners and let go of its programming. It let go of hate. And it had heard everything.

The pirates started to realize what had happened. They just lost their ride.

There was just one thing left to say: "You really shouldn't have let me talk."

The pirates one by one activated their temporal vortex manipulators and beamed through rays of perfect blue light back toward the ship for they no longer served a single master. And the captain they used to have was now standing on the wrong boat.

"Curse you..." Nemo said. The tables had been turned on him now. He was alone. Just like the rest of us.

Time was hardening around us and the Tower shook as the magnetic field of the Khamorath passed it by. Reapers were clinging to its hull, feasting on its age, for it was the oldest thing around. But of course it wasn't. The Tower was.

"Doctor!" Bill yelled. "Those creatures are coming this way!"

"Everybody hold on!" I said as I reached for Jack's vortex manipulator. Both you and him still hadn't woken up yet.

A superficial hole had been burned into the fabric of time and space all this time and temporal energy had been spilling out. But we had to burn deeper.

Imagine two dots on a piece of paper and a line drawn between them. Linear time. Crudely. Imagine me crumpling the piece of paper. Now I ask you to draw the line again in order to restore linear history from A to B. You'll tell me you can't. I can. By burning a hole through the crumpled paper. Do you understand now what we were doing?

Now imagine us causing the crumpling to begin with. With every turn of the wheel, every return of events over and over again through the causality loop we're only living once, remembering once, but time has felt a thousand times, the effects are increased until the paper is set alight.

Our actions are burning holes in the fabric of time and space and the universe tries to compensate by filling the holes with everything else. That's what causing the crumpling. The tapestry of time can't afford any gaps. They must connect, no matter what. No matter anything.

I poured more energy into the box, expanding it until the connection with the ship was lost.

Finally, Nemo saw his ship fly away without him while time exploded around him. He saw nothing else.

"You can't do this to me! This is all your fault! YOUR FAULT!"

In a fit of rage he aimed his blaster at my chest and Bernárd jumped in his way. For a split second time seemed to stand still when nothing happened. Nemo did not pull the trigger.

Annie Oakley knocked him out cold with the butt of her rifle while Bernárd sighed a breath of relief, but just before everything went black he saw your ginger ghost in his mind's eye standing before him with your arms spread out wide. His face hit the ground. Justice had been served.

"IT'S HAPPENING!" I yelled. "DON'T PANIC! AAAHHH!"

We were travelling through time and space and everything was merging. Spiralling.

For a moment the Milky Way and all its planets and asteroids seemed to blur and twirl, starlight seemed to dance and all colours of the universe coalesced into one big sweeping motion, like someone was mixing colours with a paint brush.

With every breath I added more fuel to the raging fire inside the glass box as we were fulfilling this temporal prophecy and causality loop. We were merging with the future Eiffel Tower on Earth, burning through the space time vortex and the fabric of existence bled.

Soon the universe would count on me to put the genie back into the bottle, but was that even possible?

Timezones were merging, fading into each other, warring, contrasting and conflicting until for the briefest moment I found myself staring at an incredible scene. The future.

The future was standing among us, no longer separated by space and only time, like ghostly apparations fading into being as separate wavelengths began to co-exist. The walls of time and space were still in effect, but through the crack in time, the hole in the fabric of existence, they were worked around and circumvented. Cheated.

This is what happens when you cheat the laws of time and space.

In the future, you were awake. You were crying. There were people running and they seemed mere blurs to me, while the motionless stood apart in clear view.

"He's dead, Doctor!" you cried as you found me through a veil of tears."Doctor!"

Jack's time vortex manipulator burned in my hand so I quickly pushed the last series of buttons, fired the temporal co-ordinates and sent the Eiffel Tower flying into the past. The apparitions faded into their right place and finally all energy was spent.

We had arrived at the eye of the storm.

Figments of Paris' past, present and future flew around us in giant turmoil, like standing at the heart of a bright tornado. Space collided with space, time warred time, atom exploded on to atom and everything burned with the intensity of a supernova until the sky was completely white and everything was just a blur.

Everything in the history of the solar system from birth to death was burning around us right now while the cause of it all was yet to happen.

The glass box stood at my feet while Nikola held on to my arm, the both of us were terrified of not falling into the abyss outside. The universe roared until everything would eventually become totally silent.

But not just yet.

"HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM!" I yelled, switching settings on my sonic screwdriver, looking for the right one to do what it was supposed to do. But ending it wasn't part of the prophecy. I didn't even know if it could be done.

"I CAN DO THIS!"

There was a hole in the skin of the world. The only way to close it was to open it all the way. Forces would invert and it would snap itself shut... or...

Or everything. Everything and nothing. And the end of all things.

"Great meeting you, Nikola!" I yelled through the thunderous roar of the universe and I shook his confused hand. Then I raised my sonic screwdriver, aimed it at the box and in the split second it shattered, under the weight of the tremendous energy it contained, it spilled the guts of the universe out into the open, and I flicked my sonic screwdriver on.

Bright brilliant light engulfed the last living second in the world. And that was it really.


	33. Relativity

And that was how the world ended. On an abundance of life, not death. That was new.

History was still alive, for a change, like fire in a block of ice, every second of it taken out of context (the context was taken out of context!) and all motion was cancelled, negated, because the presence of every present cancels cause and effect. There is no cause and effect.

Out there they were the same thing. All motion pulsating within a big ball of clumped time, trapped within itself, crumpled together into a limited space, every second of life vying for control over the present and we had been the last to have been caught in its blast radius.

The last cause, the last effect, which ironically was both the ending and beginning of it all. The cause and its effect. Causality from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint boggles the mind!

History crumbled into a big ball of timey whimey stuff and was conscious for every second of it. A perpetual frozen state that would become anti-time and spread throughout a universe as cancer of reality.

And it was my fault.

Amy, you were hardly awake. Still breathing. Still conscious. Still the proud owner of a past and a future. And you didn't even wonder why yet.

The only possible explanation would be that we were no longer part of history. We were cut off. But how? Cut off from existence! This was either very good or very bad. Good, because everything in existence had just gone bananas. Bad, because everything in existence had just gone bananas.

The dream you awoke from felt more real than this new place ever would. And now your hair was full of sand. You'd never forgive me for it.

"Doctor?" you mumbled half awake, brushing buckets of sand out of your hair. It was no longer as cold as it once was. A heartbeat really makes all the difference.

Your mind was still halfway out of the dark, struggling with memories that felt like a bad dream. Quite right.

But bad dreams are usually the best. It was a bad dream which gave us Frankenstein's monster. Jekyll and Hyde. Kathy Bates winning an Academy Award.

Mind you, her resemblance to the Unsinkable Molly Brown is really uncanny. I said to her: "Maggie, you're going to be immortalized one day. It's true!" Although she preferred to survive the Titanic first.

Maybe one day people would write stories about surviving the end of the universe. But at this point I doubted anyone would remember. But then again, we were in the right spot for remembering. Did any of that make sense to you? Forget it then.

There was something very wrong with this place. And I can't describe too much of it without giving away the ending. And the beginning.

D'you know that feeling? When you feel away with the tip of your finger across the edge of glass? Its smooth and clear, clean, and you can almost feel the sound it makes, you can imagine that resounding clear aura brilliantly, the piercing beauty of crystal echoes. You felt it now, that unnatural sterility and cool touch. It certainly gave me the willies. We had to be careful not to cut ourselves.

You woke up like a quintessial Romeo and Juliet to the dead body of your lover beside you. If you could call that love. I call it a fling. I would've given it two months at best.

Captain Jack's got more demons in his closet than he can shake a stick at, and mind you he's tried.

It was then that Jack shot awake with a sudden gasp, his body thrashing and clinging to the next best thing and you shouted back at him, like pure slapstick. Of course, then you literally slapped him.

"What did you do that for?" Jack asked, panting. Sometimes life is cruel.

"You scared me!"

Jack asked where he was. The slap sharpened his senses instantly. What a wake-up call. With one hand he had to nudge his jaw back in place. You're a feisty one aren't you, Amelia Pond?

"You tell me, time-traveller," you said. You coughed to get that tough metallic taste out of the back of your throat. "You're the expert."

"Great. Blame me, why don't you," Jack said when you helped him up. "As if I have all the answers."

"But we know someone who does."

The air tasted like copper and smelled like old books. The touch of glass gave you chills.

It's always a good idea to have a good look around when you're in an unfamiliar place. Check your surroundings and get a feel of the rules. Rules like gravity, density and breathable air. Never take them for granted.

**You do that all the time!**

Yes, but I'm a Time Lord. I'm allowed to.

There's rules. There's limitations. Up and down and right and wrong. It depends on the situation.

"You really think he has all the answers?" Jack asked and you gave him a knowing stare.

"That's what I thought."

Somewhere in the back of your mind you remembered older Amy waving at you from a distant hill in Wales and you wondered whether that was still set to happen.

Jack missed his handy wrist strap. It was lost in time atop the Eiffel Tower somewhere.

"I don't understand," you said. "How can we still be alive?"

"I think it has something to do with this place," Jack said and he looked back and forth from the corridor you'd just left.

You found yourself staring down a long and dark hallway in two opposite directions and corridors filled with sand. Jack reckoned it was either a mine or a dungeon.

"Did we both fall asleep?" you asked Jack and he shook his head. "Are we dead?"

It was an option even I would've contemplated. To have boldly gone where no-one has gone before. The undiscovered country.

"There's something wrong with this place," Jack said, aiming his blaster at the shadows.

The hallway made a left turn into darkness. There had been light before, but they didn't know where it was coming from. It seemed to emit from the walls itself, but this part of the hallway light could not reach.

A harrowing disquiet sent shivers down Jack's spine. The questions didn't seem to stop.

You grabbed his arm with a sudden thought. "Jack! If we're here, where are the others?"

He turned on the spot and headed straight into the opposite direction where the shadows didn't roam. That's where the corridor took a crooked right turn instead of a left, heading into the same direction, but here they found a door.

"There is no other side," Jack said to Amy when she caught up. "We haven't moved. I would've known it if we had been teleported."

"What? What does that mean?"

"Someone did one hell of a job redecorating," Jack said. Then he aimed his blaster at the rusted padlock.

"You're saying we're still in the same place?" you asked, but then Jack's gunshot missed the padlock and bounced off the walls. Its texture changed as ripples surged through it. The dark bricks and rocks and scaffolding disappeared and the illusion was lifted for a full second. No more shackles and torches. The walls were clear blue glass, like a hall of mirrors.

You gazed into Jack's eyes and read that the answer would be a whole lot more complicated than a simple 'yes' or 'no'.

I wish I similarly had someone to talk to in the end. Someone to impress. Stops me talking to myself. Or the TARDIS.

I was in the very adjacent room keeping the door shut on the other side. And don't get me wrong, I was keeping you alive. Safe. Relatively. I was working on a way to get us out of the mess I got us into. This was my fault. My responsibility.

You'd heard me tinkering on the other end, I presume. You were cursing my name when you heard the sound of the sonic fusing the door into place. Jack pounded the metal hatch with his fists.

But first things first. I sonicked the air and let sand slip from my fingers. A single handful wouldn't tell me more than I had already deduced about this place. I traced the air with my hand to look for motion blurring and with the other I snapped the extended sonic screwdriver in place like a sword. I love it when it does that.

I moved on to the next room and it was just as wrong as the others. My surroundings looked stately, like a mansion, yet gravely sour, like a dark medieval castle. I was expecting to see suits of armour standing at attention by the door. Or mining equipment.

There was something rocky about this place, something ancient and appalingly new, but I couldn't tell why I kept having that feeling. That feeling that we had been buried alive.

Then I noticed another door. Something so trivial and mundane in this impossible place I just had to go and check.

I wouldn't have opened it even if I could. Everything past, present and future was happening, has happened and will happen all at the same time beyond the wooden grain of that door. And I was on the other side.

Except there wasn't an other side. One thought at a time I began to figure out the mystery of the paradox glass.

There had been another dimension locked inside that glass. Connected to that glass. The splinter connected two parts of time and space and let the energy of the time vortex bleed out into both ends. And the moment I opened this tiny hole in existence it tore down the walls of reality.

A billion billion timezones had been warring over dominance of the present, corrupting it, like a thousand captains fighting over the wheel of a single ship. And while they were all fighting the tiniest timezone in existence snuck in and stole it from under their very noses. Who doesn't love an underdog story?

Existence was still existing. We just couldn't see it. The timezone within the glass had taken over the present and we could only see within. We were trapped within. It had engulfed us.

But it's like a different wavelength. A different dimension. I hadn't worked out the details yet, but I was going to find out soon.

Could I still restore reality? Save it? Was there still time? Did time mean the same thing in this world? Why was there gravity? Why was there air? I checked my wristwatch. There were so many things I hadn't thought of yet that could prove vital in the case at hand.

All we had to do was save a single second and the rest would fall in line.

But first we had to untangle the knot. Drain time from the present. Reality was supposed to restore itself but this reality was now standing in its place. Like a squatter. An intruder. It was now occupying this dimension and blocking the drain. It shouldn't have even lasted as long as it was, with the fires of existence eating away at its outsides, but something or someone was keeping this place alive.

"Why is a labyrinth shaped like a brain?" I mused out loud. Sand was filling my boots. It was everywhere, slowly filling this place like a broken hourglass. The sands of time were slowly leaking into this reality...

Maybe I could've used a hand but I knew from experience that things or beings hiding in pocket universes outside of reality tend to be locked out for a reason. I had a very bad feeling this might've been orchestrated from the start, but maybe that was just paranoia kicking in now that I was all alone. Or was I?

I found myself drawn to a great hall of faded white marble leading to two massive staircases at the end curled towards one another like two snakes biting each other's tails. Its where the winds blew hardest and where the signal stopped. When I entered the chamber the winds calmed suddenly, as if they could sense my presence.

Against better judgment I ascended one step at a time looking out over the white room, knowing none of it was real. Curiosity got the best of me and I just couldn't resist it.

Just like you couldn't resist following me. You were intent on finding another way out of the dungeons. Stubborn as usual. Your temerity would save the world one day. Possibly while getting you killed in the process.

Look at you. If you'd just stayed in the TARDIS like I told you, you'd never gone and stepped on that mine. But then of course, if you had you would've missed all the fun. Do you have any idea how many times I've seen the world end? Well, technically zero, because I stopped them all, except once or maybe twice, three if you count that alternate dimension full of prawns.

You would've missed all that. I have to admit, when I reached that landing, when I touched the top of those stairs, I did feel alone.

Everyone's afraid of being alone. Everyone's terrified of being alone. At the heart of the storm people cling to those nearest, perhaps by choice or by chance. When the going gets tough and when the end seems upon us...

It's been a while since I've been really alone. I almost forgot the feeling. I didn't miss it. But I needed it. I sometimes forget the responsibility I shoulder as the last of the Time Lords. The last to remember. With my death it would all be forgotten.

But it wouldn't mean it never happened. Time seemed to slow down on that landing as I looked down upon the sands of time raining down from the cracked ceiling. Bursts of white light shone from the ceiling, bright as lightning and as blinding as life and all the things we take for granted.

But who else is going to save the world? It's my specialty.

So many stories waiting to be told. Waiting to be lived. The Bone Meadows. Can't wait for that one. Or the Singing Towers of Darillium. And I still want to meet Charlie Chaplin!

And if I fail...it's not like the world would notice.

Why did I try to save them? Why couldn't I just...I think I just wanted to save someone...anyone...after losing...never mind. My friend. Rory. Rory Williams. You remember him? You remember me talking about him?

No, I didn't think you would.

Eyes that seemed to pop out of nowhere, the same grey eyes repeated in every frame of every surface, peeked from behind the curtains as if to blame me for what I'd done.

For all the suffering I'd caused.

Simon was right. I had put everything on the line. I had grown too confident in my own skills, in my own luck. I had begun to believe my own legend. I should've listened to you, Amy.

I'm just a man, you see. I'm not Space Gandalf.

I'm alone.


	34. Danse Macabre

Simon was running and kicking up heaps of sand.

This was a nightmare all too real for him. He pounded on the doors and yelled for help, while the past was gaining on him. They were coming.

In the parts of the castle where the sand hadn't reached yet, there was a strange icy fog. Always distant and always cold, sterile to the point of toxicity. Literally cool.

The sonic screwdriver's vibrations caused ripples in the texture and surface of reality. It bubbled and morphed like liquid, absorbing the vibrations like a boxer would absorb a punch. It rippled like water or flesh.

The rules had gone all topsy turvy and impossible. I loved it and it drove me mad. All the good mysteries do.

"What is this place?" I complained. Grumpy old me. I smiled because of the effect the mystery had on me. I really shouldn't have.

There was a constant creak in my step. The same sound. Everything was fake.

"Sand and glass," you rightly pointed out back in the dungeons.

It was hotter depending on proximity to the cracks.

"You think there's a connection there?"

"I like the way you think," Jack replied.

"Is that a yes or a no?" you said. It made him laugh.

He stepped back and aimed his blaster at one specific point. This time it didn't deflect or bounce but the wall absorbed the blast, twice, turning red like a sore spot before cracks appeared in the surface of the door. Then it shattered.

"Seven years of bad luck! I've had more than my fair share!" Jack quipped when he stepped through the broken arch. "The Doctor's not getting rid of us that easily."

He stepped through the shattered door, a gateway unto destruction. The blast rippled and had blown out all the torches and taken out all the lights, until you clicked on your nifty flashlight.

"Finally!" Jack smiled looking over his shoulder. "A professional!"

"I just thought it might come in handy."

"Early twenty-first century?" he asked as he peeked at the torch. "Give or take. Those were some good times."

You neither denied or confirmed him. For some reason, you didn't want to talk about it and walked right past him. He respected it, though found the way you went on doing so a bit too obvious.

"What about you then? What time are you from?" you asked reversing roles.

Blogging at the end of the universe, as usual. There should be a rule against it! It's like I have to drag you into adventure...and nearly get you killed.

"Oh, I'm from a long long way away," Jack said, purposely vague. You raised an eyebrow at that, but stopped there.

A piece of shrapnel was still glowing orange with absorbed energy on the floor and Jack found it and used it to light several torches on the wall.

"Don't touch the shadows," Jack said when he caught you reaching out to them.

"I wasn't," you lied. "Why?"

"Trust me. You don't want to do that," Jack said, on his way through the corridor.

"You know something," you deduced feistily. You couldn't resist following in his wake.

"Just a hunch," Jack then admitted, but he still wasn't going to tell.

"You're no better than the Doctor."

"No," Jack said and he flashed you his trademark smile. "I'm much worse."

Ever look in a mirror and think you're seeing a whole other world? Well, this time it's not an illusion. Mirrors can be gateways. A single shard a connection to another world. A splinter in time holding on to a dying dimension on the other side. A lifeline. Or a nail in the coffin of reality.

And we had fed it, pumped all the energy of time itself into its veins, to keep it alive, unknowingly.

Two planes, two worlds, two cars parked in the same space. Our universe was still here, raging underneath us, unseen, the tornado of time and space raged on beyond the veil.

A billion billion moments in time and space, a billion billion 'presents' and this one took over in the very last second. But that means there was still a living second; there was still a present. Linear time could still be saved, but only if this present was removed from the equation. The squatter had to go.

There was a reflection staring at Jack from the dark and there was a woman in the great hall sitting all by her lonesome self drinking an imaginary cocktail. Where to begin?

I had found my way into a beautiful ballroom. There were shiny floors and mostly mirrors, an array of sharp colours white and grey; blue and gold.

Enchantment under the Sea. There were long red drapes reaching up to the high ceiling and there was a mirror spanning the entire ceiling, reflecting the slippery floor below. And me. And the woman.

"Excuse me," I asked the brunette, mostly legs, in the blue dress sitting in the corner with earpods, lonely listening to music.

It was perhaps a bit awkward, but I was kind of expecting her to burst into flames at the sight of me. Or turn into a wherewolf. Or elongate her jaws so she could shriek at me, horribly.

It freaks me out when they do that, but she didn't, luckily. She just stared at me, almost as if she knew me. And her make-up was all running, poor thing. I actually started to feel sorry for her. So I smiled.

"He isn't coming," I told her. Clever me.

"I know," she said, and so I sat across from her in the booth. Yes, there was a booth. I forgot to mention. Plastic seats lining the walls and short tables for drinks, whereas the entire centre of the ballroom was laid bare and empty. Shining, even.

"Good. Because I don't. I was making it up. Who isn't coming?" I asked and looked past the running mascara. She'd been crying. And at least for a very long time.

"I'm the Doctor," I introduced myself. She didn't extend to me the same courtesy, instead preferring to maintain the silence. And it's not like me to be impatient, especially when it comes to beautiful mysterious women.

"This is a ballroom," I noted. "So why aren't there people dancing?"

Nothing seemed to attract her interest and again, the silent treatment. Until...

"You're wrong," she suddenly said. I had heard her accent before. A hint of Romanian and broken English. Broken as in broken heart. There's nothing like a woman scorned.

Finally she took out her earpods. She placed them on the table in front of me.

I could hear the music now. My keen ears heard a cover of Blue Moon by the Styx Makers from the 51st Century. Their lead guitarist interestingly enough was actually born on a blue moon colony AND conveniently, a monday.

The lyrics of the song were clear at times, but mostly muddled and incoherent and it seemed to be on a loop. It kept playing the same bit over and over, like a tune stuck in your head. Stuck in a moment you can't get out of.

But it was definitely a ballroom. Note the disco ball and empty glasses.

I smiled, absent-minded, for a moment. Sorry, I tend to do that on occasion when my mind wanders and there's a lot I have to remember, think about or take into account. So I leaned over to whisper.

"Wrong about what?" I asked and she finally dared to look me in the eyes. Her eyes were grey.

"They aren't people."

Structures can hold memories. That's why houses have ghosts. But if houses can hold memories, could mirrors remember reflections?

Oh, there were definitely ghosts wandering these corridors. The shadows had been eating away at this place for years.

Mirrors can be gateways. Ceilings can be floors. Beginnings can be endings and up can be down. Death can be life. The rules had all changed here in the castle at the end of the universe.

"Don't you ever get sick of it?" you asked. "Whenever you get too close he pushes you out. He never tells us the whole story. Just the bits and pieces he wants us to hear."

"Yeah, I remember that story," Jack said.

You were hesitant to follow him into the sand of the next room. Jack reached down to pick up a handful of sand, then brushed his hands clean.

Where our reality bled into this one the air became charged and hot, like a furnace, energy seeping through the cracks. You could call the sand a waste product. I call it time and space dying.

"I don't blame him anymore," he spoke, and he lifted himself up with a heavy sigh, brushing the sand off his navyblue pea coat. "I just want to know why."

He trailed off and strode towards the next chamber. A labyrinth of locked doors.

Jack was trying to trace my footprints in the sand but the tracks had all but faded and his phase blaster was running out of batteries.

When you dashed around the corner, you were the first to spot it lying on the cold floor and the only thing that entered into your mind at that point was a single word. Bait.

"That's just too easy," you said. The room was completely abandoned, except for the timevortex manipulator half buried in the sand at the far end. "It could be a trap."

"Could be. Only one way to find out."

Was it a trap? Of course it was. The entire place was a trap. A cage.

The moment Jack moved forward you felt the hint of a breath in the back of your neck. A looming shadow thrust the cold edge of a dagger in the hollow of your back, whispering a warning. It was more a snarl, really. A malicious, pointless discontent. Vengeance for the sake of vengeance. Well, is there any other kind?

Jack heard your muffled cry under the pressure of his hand but realized his mistake too late. He tried to reach for his own weapon but the fiend was already one move ahead of him. And he couldn't help but gloat.

"Drop it," Nemo said. You tried to wrestle out of his grip but you couldn't escape the prick of the dagger against your spine. Your shoes dug themselves into the sand the more he forced you to stand still.

Jack had nothing witty left to say. Nemo let him face him and watched Jack take the blaster out of its holster with two delicate fingers only to let it drop to the floor and kick up dust.

"Now what?" he asked. "Are we just going to stand here and wait?"

"Move," Nemo said and nodded forward; Jack walked backwards but Nemo did not let him pick up his vortex manipulator.

Nemo looked just as confused as the pair of you regarding this mythical place, just as baffled to how he'd come to be here. But it wouldn't stop him trying to get his way.

"Where is the Doctor?" he growled, letting go all pretention of nobility in his panic. Droplets of sweat glistened on his skull.

"Don't do this, Nemo," Jack said. "Your ship's gone. Trust me, I know the feeling. You spend your life thinking that one thing will get you made and when you finally have it, it's not enough. It's never enough. You're looking for meaning in all the wrong places..."

Nemo yelled at him to be quiet and you felt the ominous sting of the dagger retreat.

"If you want revenge, fine, take it. But let her go."

The blade slid away unnoticed to make way for the muzzle of a pistol and in a flash of blue Jack's arm flailed backward and he dropped. You thrashed and screamed within his sweaty palm, elbowed him in the gut but he pulled you back by your hair, dragging you from room to room.

He spoke about how no-one understood, no-one knew, and with that a flickering instant of self-realization dawned upon him, yet he refused to listen. No time.

He flung you in his path and you fell at gunpoint. Looking up at him, all you could see was the vivid blue flash that hit Jack in your mind's eye.

"Please," you begged him. "Please don't kill me..."

"It's gone!" he yelled and tears started to run down his face. He walked in circles, writhing in the pains of anger, his gun an extention of his fear. He pressed its butt against his temple and screamed a primal scream.

Then he saw your face and it left him.

"I don't feel it anymore," he said. "But you! You. You felt it too. You were there inside my mind. The connection. It betrayed me. The silence is killing me!"

"I don't know..."

"A thousand voices inside my head! Tell me you felt it! TELL ME!"

You shot up when he aimed the blaster at you. You tried to crawl away in the sand, the tears of panic in your eyes lingering where confusion had really taken its place.

"I felt it. For a little while," you admitted and you tried to remember.

"Tell me why I shouldn't just pull this trigger right now," Nemo spoke.

He was looking for a reason. A reason to live. A reason to die.

The answer to his question hit him quite hard. Literally. He was hit sideways with a piece of wood.

Simon stood panting over Nemo's body. Victim of adrenaline. You couldn't believe the moustache.

He tried to remain dignified in a sense. Gentlemen don't boast about their feats of valour.

"Oh, you really have a way with words," you said to the speechless gent. Nemo was recovering. A second blow to the head might've lead to some serious brain damage, but he was lucky that in this place, just like doors aren't really doors, wood wasn't really wood. The glass shattered on impact like everything else.

"Run!" you told Simon when you noticed the former captain's grip on his weapon returned.

Then you both nearly bumped into the strangest sight. A pale man in a tux. A man without a face, like a plastic mannequin, but this wasn't an Auton. There was something living about it. Something hidden in its faceless features. Something blurry and unfocused. Incomplete.

In your fit of panic you ran straight past it, survival instinct kicking in and adrenaline taking over, with only one imperative in mind. Find Jack.

You ran as if the whole world was chasing you. Which wasn't at all far from the truth.

All the locked doors had suddenly opened and you ran from chamber to chamber and nothing seemed to make sense anymore. No room seemed to be in its rightful place.

Like someone had taken a puzzle and finished it with all the pieces in the wrong places. Or, basically, like a Picasso painting.

One moment you were running through a bedroom, the next it was a kitchen, and in every corner there was a faceless being staring while you passed.

In the dining area you came to witness the weirdest spectacle. It felt like a play.

There were maids in the kitchen chopping and boiling invisible foods. Mopping up sand no-one noticed was there. Butlers carrying trays with nothing on it. There were people laughing while smoking invisible cigars and drinking imaginary brandy from empty glasses. And you and Simon passed through these strange affairs unnoticed like ghosts, like the only visitors to the most weirdest Disney attraction ever.

"What are they, robots?" you asked but Simon did not understand what that meant.

"They're everywhere!" he spoke. "I've seen them all over this complex. Where are we? Where has the Doctor taken us?"

Then a vase exploded next to you. Nemo had caught your scent. The faceless did not seem to notice until suddenly the laughter stopped. The host's grip shattered the glass within his hand.

Some of them had eyes, others had ears and even noses, but never in the right place on their faces. At least most of them had fingernails, barely a consolation, but still...

The walls contorted and shimmered around the scenes. People with half faces and permanent gloves wandered in assigned directions as if they were on a track.

Nemo shouted your name. Then mine. He assaulted the dinner table and threw aside the dinnerware in a fit of rage while the faceless barely noticed. They just kept on drinking with or without a glass.

"What sort of place is this?" Nemo cried out. Finally he realized the madness of this scene. He barely saw it as blood dripped slowly into his right eye. In the second it took him to wipe it away you found time to run.

Nemo's next shot bounced and hit the moosehead on the wall which fell down in a rain of sparks before shattering like everything else.

Back in the dungeons you found unexpected calm. The once unnerving setting now felt familiar and safe but with one vital piece of the puzzle missing. Jack.

Only a stain of blood was left behind in the sand as proof that he had actually been there and that he wasn't just part of your imagination the whole time. He was real and he had to be real. But nothing felt real. It all felt as some insane and paranoid nightmare.

"He was bleeding," you explained to Simon. Gasping for air after every sentence. He was shot and desperate and running and trying to find you! He could've gone anywhere in this labyrinth.

"What were those things? Who were all those people?" Simon asked.

"I don't know," you said, turning away, but when the next thought hit you, you grabbed him again, by the collar. "But the Doctor knows. We have to find him."

And Simon was mesmerized. Only you can pull of manic and beautiful at the same time. There should be a word for that.

Simon didn't know who to look for first. Jack or me. The adrenaline confused him.

"I haven't run like that since...since..." Simon said, but then he trailed off. "I don't remember."

"Listen," you told him, literally grabbing his attention again and he listened. "We have to find Jack and we have to find the Doctor and we're going to find a way out of this place. Whatever it is."

He nodded.

"I can't do this," you added and it caught you off-guard, like a secret. The words felt alien but they made sense and you wondered why you felt safe telling this man. This neurotic librarian.

There had been much confidence in your metal form. The events of the Eiffel Tower felt like a different country. So much power. Almost like a different Amy. Like you were role-playing as a stronger Amy. Human Amy was dark and daunting and vulnerable. Always running and always helpless and confused.

But this time you were putting your foot down. This was the end of the world and someone's arse was going to be kicked. And I really hoped it wasn't going to be mine.

"What do you want me to do?" Simon asked and you had to grind your teeth for a moment.

"Just shut up and follow me."

You let him go and he swallowed.

"A simply thank you would've sufficed!" he muttered under his breath, but he then realized saving your life would've all been in vain if you'd all died here anyway.

But now they were everywhere. The doors were no longer locked and you never wondered who opened them. Or what. Or what had locked the doors in the first place.

If you kept really really quiet, you could almost imagine yourself under water while these faceless white figures drifted past, floating through some dark and dreary dream. And they did not stop for anything and you were too scared to find out what would happen if they touched or passed through you. Clever girl.

"This isn't right," Simon said. "Their heads are made of glass."

And he was right. You hadn't even noticed it before. When direct light shone upon it they would reflect pure white and show vague images of features and emotions which almost made them look like people, but they were really empty inside. It's like these faces were projected upon the glass from the inside. But it didn't look mechanical. It looked more like a bubble drifting through a dark underwater show.

Jack had left a trail of blood from room to room like a trail of breadcrumbs. After a while these strange people started to feel harmless, but consciously you never left your guard down, especially with a gun-toting madman on the loose.

"Jack?" you asked the dark, hoping he hadn't wandered too far off. You started to wonder whether he had left you. It was more likely that he tried to follow and rescue you but got lost when the rooms changed places. Here it happened again.

The blood trail ended abruptly at the door and not a trace of it on the other side.

"Jack?" you pleaded, aiming your flashlight into the next room and you couldn't stop your hand from shaking.

A clock struck midnight, haunting.

Simon gasped. He thought he'd just heard something. The faceless moved soundlessly. Sometimes only the cutlery clashed, but there was a strange wind roaming the halls, like the deep bellowing of a distant sandstorm.

"Where are the others?" Simon asked.

"I don't know."

He grew uneasier by the second.

"So you're the Doctor's companion?"

"Companion?" you asked. "Whoever calls himself a companion?"

"The fate of the Doctor's companions never bodes well," Simon added darkly. As if this was really the best time for more scary stories.

"I don't care," you said. Simon thought you should.

"What's your name, girl?"

You didn't like the way he called you 'girl'. You don't like it when anyone calls you 'girl'.

"Amelia," you answered. You winced immediately.

"Amy," you corrected yourself. "Call me Amy."

You jumped when the next door opened. A little girl with golden braided hair smiled at you from the other side. No sign of glass. She almost looked completely human.

"I don't remember you," she said. Then she skipped and hopped towards her little writing desk.

Then she disappeared.

"JACK!" you hollered, then you changed to your inside voice. "Please, please Doctor, I want to get out of here..."

Then came a pained whisper. "Amy..."

You found Jack in the corner of what appeared to be a library, but the books that Jack had knocked off the shelf had opened up when they hit the floor and revealed its pages to be completely blank.

You supported him, for his side was scorched, bleeding, and he could barely stand.

"Any sign of the Doctor?" he groaned.

"Please keep the light aimed outward," Simon pleaded. "I can't see anything in this dark."

And as if his complaint had been heard the walls started lighting up suddenly and bright light started to burst through every horizontal and vertical line.

"We're the playthings of the gods..." Simon whispered.

The illusion faded and the glass lost form and shape, becoming completely see-through. Even the floors faded, the faceless people disappeared and beneath your feet the fire of the universe roared.

The entire structure of the castle was see-through but somehow still intact. A few chambers away, Nemo spotted you. His blasts shattered the glass around him in his attempts to reach you. One at a time.

"This place is dying," Jack told you. He succumbed to the pain and sank to the floor. He pressed his vortex manipulator device, bound in leather, into your palm. "Put it on and press this. It'll take you out of sync with this universe long enough until this place dissolves. You'll be safe. You'll rematerialize when the universe takes form."

"Where?" you asked. "And where will I be?"

"Trust me. You don't want to know."

Colours as bright as night and day swirling through the universe, starlight and black void intertwining in sparkling mass, a billion billion Earths and Saturns and moons stirring and merging in an endless storm, yet motionless and frozen in a blinding array of light from all spectra.

The light hurt your eyes. And mine too. Except you hadn't been conscious for the first show. I had seen it before. A second ago.

The brightness of the frozen galaxy reflected in the glass until they seemed to be only made out of pure light and you were expecting them to crack any minute and have you fall into the final abyss (the final second) to join the living dead in their never-ending dance.

In the glass shadows literally seemed to be dancing, figures and shapes, like a play of the light.

All the while I whispered: "Wait."

You held each other's hands.

And Captain Nemo shouted at the end of the universe, until the anger itself became toxic to everything it touched. Even himself. And you watched him and you felt pity.

And then he felt it too.

I appeared to him in the glass, real enough, the glass channeled my thoughts and I just waited as Nemo sank into a pile of man. Helpless from the moment he was born. At least, that's what he liked to think. He would've liked to be absolved of all responsibility, released from all the blame. I know the feeling.

But he never tried. He never once tried to be the better man. The man he could've been. A great man.

Captain Nemo.

"Why are you doing this?" Nemo cried. I waited.

"This is all your fault! Your fault!" The gun was empty and he threw it on the ground, if there had been ground. There was only the glass.

"You've been your own undoing, Nemo. And you could've been so much more," I told him.

He crawled and quivered in the face of my reflection.

"Look at her," I said, knowing where his gaze would lead him. "Just look at her. Look at yourself reflected in her and look at how she looks at you. Look at yourself in the eyes of an innocent and see who you really are."

He touched the pity. Tasted it. The fear, anger and disgust. But mostly the pity.

"I've made such a mess," Nemo admitted. "Now I have nothing."

"No, you don't," I said. "There's just one last thing. Just one."

Nemo looked up, defying the bright light that blinded him to look at me, and I smiled.

Something rare and so precious and invaluable.

"A second chance."

When the universe would reshape itself in the way it was the paradox would be undone, Nemo's twisted life would unravel and undo the damage once done.

He could have a new life. A new start. A better life. But only if he wants it. Only if he takes responsibility and stops being afraid.

"Dare be a better man," I said. "Don't waste this. Paradoxes don't grow on trees, you know."

And he finally understood.

The glass started to crack and I focused all my might to redirect existence one final time and in a flash we found ourselves in the TARDIS, right underneath the main control room.

I rebounded upward, rejoicing and embracing the memory of my beloved TARDIS.

Simon leaped from one confusion to another. And he hadn't even stepped aboard the real thing yet.

"Come on, Pond! We're not out of the woods yet!" I yelled, running laps around the TARDIS console. It all felt real, but I knew it really wasn't.

"HELLO!" I exclaimed spreading my arms. "Welcome to the end of the universe! Please form an orderly line while I take care of some business. Jack!"

I could tell by your faces you were overwhelmed by events. And you were still holding hands. Jack was still bleeding.

"Rule number one!" I told Jack. "Don't wander off! What's so hard about that rule? And you!"

I pointed at you and I accidentally startled you. I shouldn't have pointed. That was rude.

"Stop pondering."

"What?"

"That's what you Ponds do! Pondering! Stop it! And you!"

I pointed again. At Simon this time. Then I took a deep breath and straightened my jacket.

"You were right. And I'm sorry. AND YOU!"

I pointed at Nemo, still speechless and mystified and slightly peeved, but he'd be over that in a second. So I smiled.

"Scarecrow."

He didn't understand. I didn't expect him to. I ran another lap around the TARDIS flipping switches that didn't really do anything. It just felt good doing it. Was it cheating? I should've been more careful...

"They were memories," I told you.

Where the glass had come from was still unknown. It must've been part of this place. No, it was from our world. Mirrors can be doorways, but the doorway was shattered, except one piece must've pierced the link, wounded time, got stuck halfway dimensions when the gap closed!

Then it was salvaged, stored and harnassed by geniusses, stolen by pirates and it had been powering Nemo's validium ship ever since. Fueled by the power of time itself, which was everything we poured into it in time's final seconds, it retroactively powered Nemo's paradox!

"The castle! This TARDIS! Are all fake. All copies. Reflections of actual places. Memories of days gone by. But very specific memories."

"So those people without faces?"

"They weren't people. They were almost people. They were memories of people. Some well-preserved, well-remembered, others forgotten."

The last word struck a cord with you I couldn't help but notice.

"Were they alive?" you asked. I deemed it a question best left unanswered.

"A dimension shaped by psychic residue. Glass shaped by temporal waste. We're both creating and ending this place at the same time and all in less than a few minutes. This must be a record!"

"Doctor," Jack said. "What are we going to do about him?"

He was most definitely referring to Nemo. And I threw it right back at him, prodding his wounded chest. "What are we going to do about you?"

The wound was beginning to take its toll on Captain Jack.

"You know what's going to happen. Don't deny it. You knew all along."

I didn't deny it.

"I say we tie him up and leave him," Simon said.

"The paradox will take care of that!" I said. "Trust me."

Nemo closed his eyes. Redemption on his mind. He didn't care to apologize or make amends. He didn't care to make peace or accept responsibility. He just wanted it to end.

He accepted death and judgment. And mercy. To expect more would've been foolish.

Then the TARDIS shook. It was ready to burst. This dimension was falling apart. Its previous host had left and now I was the only thing forcibly keeping it alive. Feeding it with my memories to shape it and maintain form and substance while the universe pounded on the doors outside to be let in.

But if I opened the doors now we would've been swept away with the tide and scattered into atoms before Simon could even fathom what an atom was. Which is in no way an insult to his intelligence, by the way.

"This pocket universe won't last long," Jack said.

"Scarecrow?" you asked and I smiled. Finally someone took the bait and I had hoped it would've been you.

"Scarecrow," I said, pointing at Nemo. "Looking for a brain. Jack, the tin man looking for a heart. Simon, the cowardly lion, looking for courage. And finally Dorothy, just looking for a way home. See what I did there?"

Finally a smile. I had been waiting for that all day.

The TARDIS shook again. The cloyster bells started to chime.

"I still don't understand, Doctor!" you yelled over the noise while I strived to maintain the TARDIS and the façade.

In the back of my mind the psychic link burned, but not to worry. I spent an entire year hooking up to a psychic sattelite network once to connect the whole of humanity, so it wouldn't be much effort to keep a small room going for just five minutes.

Then the console exploded.

Oh, by the way, I'm slightly psychic. Yes, you were right. There was so much I wasn't telling you.


	35. Out of Time

It felt like something out of a dream watching her pick the tears from her eyes by dabbing it with a stained napkin. Stained because of the mascara which was rubbing off on it. She was so lifelike, so incredibly real, yet any sonic vibration would bounce right off her and reveal the truth inside. She was empty.

A footprint on the beach. Or at least that's what I thought she was, but there was something bigger behind it, something alive.

She was a moment stolen from time. A present. A memory.

"Mnemonic or eidetic? Definitely not eidetic..." I thought out loud.

She was a whisper underneath the fire. Through tears she looked at me. Somber like the last ray of morning sunlight on a cloudy day. A face like the Earth's moon: pale and somehow shivering. Her eyes grey like a clear evening. She wanted to be left alone.

"Why are you crying?" I asked and I wondered how much of me she was seeing. "Where do you think you are?"

"Lady Terrance's wake," she answered and suddenly there was movement in the booth behind me. Unintelligible voices and half-remembered conversations and people without faces. They'd all been dragged into existence, shaped by thought. There was consciousness in every atom, awareness in all matter.

The glass felt cool and clean and every surface in this world felt the same because it was made of the same stuff. Stuff dreams are made of.

The ballroom had come to life. A memory summoned into existence at the woman's whim.

"Who are you?" I asked but she had disappeared. She was sentient, that's all I could gather. She was aware of where she was, past present and future, where the glass people were merely part of the charade. And she could control it with her mind, whenever it didn't control her.

The ballroom had come to life, but sadly there was little to no dancing. They had mainly gathered in groups to talk gibberish at each other, listening to the same piece of music over and over again.

The glass people moved without walking and then a tray of cocktails nearly knocked me off my boots. A drink shattered to the floor and the very liquid within crystallized upon impact, turning to dust at my feet. The ghosts never even knew I was there. But that would soon change.

Then I found her again, almost in passing. In fancy dress once more, surrounded by a bullion of guests, schmoozing and drinking brandy and scotch in garbled conversation near fake fire.

She wasn't crying anymore, but she clung to her drink as if it was the only thing worth holding on to. She was alone in a crowd, until she saw me and she recognised me, like I knew she would.

The Forgotten listened to her stories and laughed at her jokes. Except they didn't have faces, nor any mouths to laugh with.

And I watched her and I watched everything, wondering who they were, or better yet, who they were supposed to be.

"Penny..." I gasped, while trying my best to evade the people around me.

Her name hung in golden letters from her neck and I assumed it was there for a reason. A neck adored by many. But it wasn't just her beauty that attracted the men to her, like moths to a flame, distracted by her resounding presence. There was something else about her I couldn't put my finger on just yet.

"Why this place?" I asked her. "Why these people?"

Of all places in the universe why bring this castle back to life?

And she stopped to think about it for a second, as if she hadn't thought about it in quite some time. Ages perhaps. Seconds or centuries, but probably both.

"Because it's all he knows."

It's not just a copy. It's a flawed copy. Memories are subjective, dare say biased. I was seeing whoever he thought she was seeing. Whatever he wanted to see. Wanted me to see.

The memory of this place and these people had been distorted over time, lost and forgotten, diluted, tainted, altered, like all memories are.

But never before have memories been given such presence, such physical form, before. There was a psychic connection, a link, a signal, that could lead me to the source.

Despite all her sagely sadness, she wasn't real. But what is real? Memories can't have memories. Or else they'd be alive. Is that my new definition of life? Does that mean forgetting equals dying?

She was alive. This was just a remote manifestation, channeled through the looking glass, call it an astral projection if you will.

"Listen to me!" I begged her to listen while she shyly took a zip from her glass. Sand was pouring down her throat. "Time is literally running out! There won't be anything left! The whole universe is dying and there is only one way to stop it."

The laughter around me became more and more distorted, their movements blurred and slowed down, and when I moved closer to Penny they looked at me without eyes. Without souls. Then they laughed again as if nothing had happened. Over and over again, on an endless, torturous loop.

Somehow, they were listening...

How many times had they been summoned here to re-enact this moment? They were literally in a state of constant flux, hot to the touch, compressed with so much energy, as if the glassblower was still working on them, and in a way he still was. They were glowing. Burning. Changing.

Remembering changes memories. With new information, new links forged, new associations, different interpretations of events and different focus. Secrets and other things you didn't know in the past when revealed in the future can change entire aspects of a single conversation. A single word. And in this world it could change reality.

And these people were changing as we speak. In a constant state of being overwritten, replaying the same moment over and over again, like actors forced to redo a take. But they weren't even actors. They were extras in the play of life, consigned to the background, specifics lost in time, they have become whatever they needed to be to fill the gaps.

Like the shadows. The darkness in this place wasn't the absence of light. If I had shone my flashlight at it the shadows would've still been there. The places where the host's memory failed him. Absence of knowledge, not light. His mind filled the gaps with the predictable and the familiar and comfortable lies.

I followed Penny from room to room. She kept to herself mostly, moving through the crowd of admirers like I did in her wake, too shy to be touched, clinging to her drink as if it would calm the caged storm inside her.

Every room held a different scene, like walking from one chapter to another. A castle full of memories, in which any given room could become any given moment in time, restricted to the castle's private history.

Moments recorded by the mind's eye. Visual images converted into electrical signals and interpreted by the brain. Everything seen or smelled, every sound, stored as samples. Snatching a present out of time and making a copy of it to be kept forever.

This time we were alone again. At least, if we didn't count the coffin as a person. The round chamber was lit by small candles. The touch of their perpetual flames didn't even scold me. Nothing was real.

Not even the gravity really held me down to the floor; whenever I jumped I didn't go up. Everything beneath me moved down, playing along to my expectations.

I was loving this. I placed my hands firmly on the lid of the coffin. What next?

"What did you mean when you said everything is dying?" Penny asked. "The universe is dying..."

"And I can save it. This isn't real, Penny. This is make-believe."

"Don't say that!" she shushed me. Again there was this fear that someone else might be listening. She was shaking, almost too nervous, too aware of every sound, and I saw the outline of a door hidden in the black woodgrain behind her, yet she hesitated to open it. Why?

"What's in there, Penny? What are you so afraid of?"

"I'm afraid of him. Only him. Only ever him. This is his castle. His birthright."

Finally it was becoming clear.

"He told me he saved me."

Saved. Stored. Imprisoned.

"He's locked himself inside the astronomy tower for over a thousand years and he hasn't set foot outside it since."

"Since when?"

"I can't remember."

Seconds or centuries.

"You have to take me to him. It's what he wants. He knows I'm coming. He's been watching me since the moment I got here."

But then I realized that's what she had been afraid of.

"He's waiting for me, isn't he?" I asked and she closed her eyes and cried.


	36. The Storyteller

And you know the rest. The rest is history. The ending's an easy guess, because I'm not going to kill off the main character. The main character is me. The Doctor.

Predictably, we got out, somewhat in one piece, with an amazing story to tell our grandchildren's grandchildren of what we saw beyond the end of time itself. But, of course, it was all a cheat. Time wasn't over, because it was still very much alive inside this world of psychic glass.

Infinity compressed into seconds; a million pasts and futures compressed into the present.

It could almost make someone think they are immortal. It could almost make someone believe they are a god.

He had been its creator, the architect and source of all these memories and dreams, and every moment he had been keeping it intact had meant the death of time itself.

Cracks in the fabric of this world, shaped like forked lightning, burning through the skin of the glass ceiling, let the sands of time into the hourglass and every grain of sand represented a lost moment in time. A kiss or a walk at the beach, a still point or a fixed point, or both. All lost and forgotten. And he had let it all happen. But not anymore.

This man was gone now. The burden was on me now. My mind was the dam that kept the waves of time from crashing into us. I had lost Rory, I had lost Penny, but I refused to lose them too.

"Don't worry," I told you. "I'll save you."

I didn't know how. I was burning up time just to give myself time to think. Was it all in vain?

It couldn't have been. You were there. On the hill in Wales in 2020. That was still all supposed to happen for you. And my adventures with River. I looked into your eyes and could see all the things that were yet to come and all the things I could lose. All the things that I had risked just to save you.

The TARDIS was burning. Nemo covered his face from the sparks.

I wish I could've told you how sorry I was. I wish I could've told him.

Penny had brought me up those steps towards the Observatory and the creator's subconscious was staring us down. He feared me.

The glass people fed off the power of the universe burning through every atom left in existence. They surged with lightning, looming over us, to try and stop us getting to the end of the white gallery. They howled and the walls did not absorb the sound: they created it. Enhanced it like speakers or amplifiers of his mind. I sensed his mind like psychic noise and Penny was the ball of red fleece that was going to get me through his labyrinth of thought.

And underneath it soft waterfalls of sand pored through every crevace of the corridor. I was going to miss that sound.

Barefoot, she lead me through endless passages and infinite rooms. For every room there was a memory. In one there were scientists applauding each other in a white room and in another there was a mother tending to the wounds of her son near a comforting fireplace...

I wonder what Penny found inside that coffin. She had dug her hands into the white linen as if it were a warm bath and not a dead person's resting place, but instead of a body inside there were trinkets and objects: old toys, keys, notes, broken bracelets and fridge magnets and countless other worthless trivial stuff. Or in other words: invaluable memories.

Penny sometimes looked back at me, almost angrily, as if she had a reason to hate me, almost as if she knew I was going to kill her. And yet she helped me anyway. She knew she was walking to her own doom.

Something she had found in there had given her strength, had given her the courage to do what she had to do.

She walked right past the ancient sculpture guarding the entrance to the giant gates and at first I thought it was depicting Hercules taming Cerberus in bright white marble, but when I walked around it the image seemed to change. It was Paris, the hero of antiquity, not the city. Paris the coward, raised by wolves. Paris the prince and lover. The man who killed a god. The man whose love destroyed a civilization.

We were anomalies inside an anomaly. It was good of me not to bring you there. Three's a crowd. I had locked you inside that dungeon for your own good.

I sensed his mind upon arrival, like remembering a dream.

"Is this any way you treat your guests?" I yelled out, dancing to the black swirling patterns on the floor. I couldn't help myself. They were like overlapping ripples of silver moons and golden waves on marble tiles and it made me feel like I was walking across tombstones. Every step only made me angrier and at the same time it made me want to dance.

The Observatory was a giant domed chamber, like a giant attic with a hole in the roof. Reverbation continued throughout without end. The mahogany blood red floor creaked under the pressure of my black boots. I looked around, but there was no-one there, except this big white ball hovering in the middle of the dome.

I felt slight apprehension, being lead to him like a lamb being lead to a slaughter. Penny was leading me right where he wanted me, and we had played right to his tune right from the very start. But then again, I love being bold and curious and all kinds of clever and it's not really taking the bait if the bait takes you. Curiosity never killed any cat! The monsters did.

"Doctor..." Penny whispered behind me.

Two things appeared inside the chamber while the giant gate disappeared. A god has no need for doors. Suddenly I felt like a tramp begging for an audience with an emperor. I wondered how many more tricks he had up his sleeve.

It was a mirror and a bed, standing at opposite sides of the room. The room was giant, with several adjacent little private areas obscured by white blinds. I loved the ascetic aesthetic and it almost would've been a white void room if it wasn't for the red floor and the incessant doodling scratched into every surface. I didn't mind though. In fact, I was inclined to add a drawing of my own now.

"What do you want from me?" I puzzled cautiously, speaking my mind. "D'you want me to check this out? Do I have any other choice but to play along with your games?"

Oh, but this wasn't a game. And if it were a game, I would've lost by default.

I approached the mirror first and I saw a man reflected within it mimicking my movements as I got closer. One step at a time and the man would do the same. I waved my hand through the air and he did likewise. But he wasn't me. From where I was standing he was barely a silhouette, but something already told me I was not going to like what I would find.

"Stay there, Penny," I told her while the big white ball loomed over us, spinning slowly on command. Sometimes clockwise, but I noticed how it would often stop its spin to turn into the opposite direction. It seemed to be made out of expensive white and stainless chrome possibly the size of a small truck. Something was controlling it. Something was controlling everything. And I hated it.

"Doctor?"

The voice came from the mirror this time, except it couldn't have.

"Doctor, where am I?"

"No..." I said. "No...NO! Rory...NO!"

He was trapped on the other side of the mirror. This good, good man. This dead man. This impossible man! He was pounding desperately on the edge of the glass as if he somehow knew he belonged on the other side. I tried helping him with all my might but again it wasn't enough.

He was my friend and he died. This couldn't be him. This couldn't physically be him.

"Doctor, how do I get out? Tell me!"

"I...I don't know," I said, folding back my hair and shaking and stammering and sonicking and slapping myself to confirm that I was really awake and this was real. Except it wasn't. This was all him and I knew it.

There was only one way he could've brought Rory back. I was the only one to remember him. My memories. He's been inside my mind.

"Where's Amy?" Rory asked. "Is she all right? Is she hurt?"

"She can't...SHE CAN'T. Could she?"

I could bring him back. I could bring them all back. A half life's better than no life, is it? An incomplete life, half remembered, half forgotten. It's no different from your parents, Amy. It could happen. Could it? Should it?

Words didn't mean what they used to anymore. Every time I think I've got the universe worked out there is always something that flips everything on its head again. So maybe I could save him. Maybe this could happen. And I wondered whether this had been a gift.

Then something hurt Rory. On the other side of the mirror something cut his skin and electrocuted him at the same time. I shot towards the mirror as something shot him over and over again without killing him. He wouldn't stop shouting your name.

He would never stop fighting for you. Never ever. Because he loves you. And he'll never stop loving you. Not even in death.

"Do you see what I can do to you now?" a voice bellowed from nowhere. And everywhere.

It bellowed bitterly and weary. How long has he waited for me? Really?

"Do you see what will happen if you cross me?"

It was a warning.

My hands left sweaty imprints upon the mirror's glass as I watched Rory fall to his knees in pain and there was nothing I could do. He wasn't even real. He was just a memory. But I still couldn't stop myself from crying.

"Why are you doing this, Doctor?" Rory asked.

"It's not me...it's...it's..." I tried to say, but I had nothing. When I turned around Penny was gone.

I had no other choice but to turn to the white metal ball at the centre of the room. There was no other place where he could be hiding.

"Is this it? Is this the best you can do?" I called for him.

I recognised it to be a telescope. The air beneath it almost seemed thickened because of its constant heavy buzz, radiating heat down below. Slowly the ball sank and Rory pressed his face against the glass to peer at it.

I felt his eyes watching me as it came down. Then hydraulics hissed and a door opened in the side of the chrome globe telescope. Inside there was a man sitting on his throne and I wondered whether he'd gone mad before or after he was swallowed up by this place.

But what did she mean when she said 'birthright'? Why remember this place and keep it alive?

The door descended to form a stairs and I leaped upon it to watch my foe in the eyes. To try and catch him off-guard. He can't control me if I'm unpredictable, but he knew all my threats were empty. If he'd seen into my eyes he would've predicted I would act unpredictably.

He'd know that I'd know that he'd know that I knew that there was nothing I could do.

The man inside the machine was a thin man with curly brown hair. Small lips. Handsome cheekbones and grey peas for eyes. I was struggling for a proper hello, considering he'd just hurt one of my friends.

"Come on then," he dared me, while I breathed upon him. "I trust you to have figured it out by now."

"Who are you?" I asked.

"Don't mock me."

He pushed me aside and casually walked out of his machine while he knew I was watching.

"The universe is dying," I bellowed but he dismissed it.

"Tell me something I don't know."

He pretended to be busy. Our voices resounded like they would in a church.

"You'll be upset in thirty seconds," he told me. "Angry in sixty."

"Is that a threat?" I asked.

"Fourty-eight."

He was pretending to polish the gold buttons on his ancient uniform, almost Hessian in appearance, like an old naval officer who'd lost his flair, and he wore it with disdain. Like a child playing dress-up. He tore off the high collar whenever it didn't suit him.

His calculated calm was terrifying. He sat crouched at the centre of the universe like a coiled spring, his gaze set and unwavering, as if he was measuring (or counting) and I wondered if he knew. I wondered if he could feel it, because I did. The universe was pounding at the outsides of this reality, begging to be let in. And he just waited. Waited for me.

In my mind I compiled everything I knew about this man, everything I had deduced from roaming his inner thoughts and subconscious: his memories. What did it tell me?

"The universe is always ending and always has," he said. "You really have no idea what's going on, do you?"

He smiled. He brushed his long hair back over his large skull, but it was too wild to be tamed.

"I admit this has been a weird sort of day," I said, briefly skimming the contents of his telescope. It was fake, just like everything else. Except for one thing.

"One of the good days, I'm sure," the man replied with his back turned towards me. "It's been amusing to watch."

I caught the importance of that sentence. He had been watching, for far longer than I could have imagined. The telescope above his head was pointed at the eternal night sky. Here in this dimension beyond time and space, the universe had been unending for centuries, with everything happening at the same time. A tempered schism through the looking glass.

"I have felt the universe," he spoke almost proud and I knew what it meant. Through the gaps in the fabric of time and space he had peered and it changed him. As it had changed me.

"I felt your pain, Doctor, as I have felt everyone's pain. People are suffering in every second of existence and what do you do? You do nothing."

"No..." I whispered. I was...affected...by it. By all of it. By myself and by the schism. First Validium and now this. It was almost as if the old days had returned, as if the Time Lords themselves had come back from the dead, bit by bit, and then it hit me.

"No...You said you knew me. You said you felt the universe...You can't have."

He wrapped a leather strap around his wrist, a time vortex manipulator I had seen before.

"None of this would've happened if it weren't have been for you, Doctor," he said calm while he checked the settings of the device. "If it wasn't for the good Doctor burning a hole in the universe. But that wasn't even the best part. The best part was when you burned Gallifrey. That was a doozey."

His anger radiated across the chamber. I sat down inside the telescope because there was nothing else I could do. Worst of all, he thanked me for all of it.

"Tell me, Doctor, how does it feel to be responsible for the deaths of so many mighty civilizations? Are you proud?"

"Where's Penny?" I asked.

I watched Rory return my gaze from within his glass trappings, but there was nothing I could do about him as well. He pleaded with me and watched me face this nameless god, but he wasn't going to be a god for much longer...

Following the man's surreptitious glance towards the bed on the other side of the room, I immediately jumped out of the telescope and marched towards it, not caring what I would find. Not caring that I already knew.

It was one of those old beds, fit for a princess. A bed you'd find in a castle with four headstrong bedposts and a glass canopy and dreamy transparant green curtains that danced in the breeze.

The wind grew stronger. It howled with bursts of flame, darkening the sky, burning the stone ceiling, until it was gone completely.

The ceiling and walls were melting all around us, burning like the edges of red, hot glass, and even the floor would desintegrate to form small islands of wood where we alone stood. The mirror cracked and Rory was gone, and in the bed I had found another dreamer. It was Penny.

The void would soon come for her beauty as it would for everything else. And the man laughed.

"You really don't know who I am, do you?" he said. "Funny, seeing you put me here! Now this'll be your prison, not mine. Your very own little dollhouse where you can play for the rest of time. If there's any left."

"YOU LOOKED INTO THE SCHISM!" I bellowed, because apparantly I was the only one who knew what that meant. He peered into that telescope and felt the universe.

I thought I was going insane. My past was being dug up, reflected in the walls of this very world and for a second there I almost thought he was part of me. My responsibility. I calmed myself down.

"You looked into the raw power of the universe and you saw suffering. And that is amazing, that is genuinely beautiful. Where some see power, others see danger, or beauty...but you saw pain. But is that all you saw? You cared...and that is wonderful. That should've been me. That should've been all of us."

"Yes, that should've been you! That should've been you! So why me? Am I the only one that sees this? Am I the only one that feels this? Am I?"

"No..."

"Because it's just you and me now, Doctor. And I've seen the life you lead. Don't you ever stop and look back to the mess you've made of the universe, Doctor? And you lead your life to try and make a difference. To try and keep it all from falling apart. You always act like such a radical, while all you aim to achieve is the preserval of the status quo of suffering, but you know what? The universe isn't fair. It should be. IT SHOULD BE.

"You could end it all. You could save them! EVERYONE! You could go back and change it but you never do. You run away. But we could change it. Together. Reboot the universe. Start from scratch. Take down the system and make it better. Make the universe fair.

"But I know I won't convince you. In the future you are still as stubborn..."

"The future?"

"In a few moments there'll be no future," he told me. "Tomorrow is yesterday. From the remains of the day I will build a universe without suffering. Because for some there is no passing shadow. The shadow is permanent. For those who are dying in the trenches everyday and for those who have to live beyond it with the scars.

The shadow is only a passing thing if you are born in daylight. Everyone else is doomed to endure the dark."

"Think of what you are sacrificing!" I yelled, because I couldn't hear any more. The universe isn't all suffering! Look at what you are doing!"

"I have done nothing," he told me when he came down his platform. "This was all you. All of it."

He walked up to me and I saw his eyes were filled with tears.

"This is your gift to me and this is me seizing the opportunity. This is me seizing the day. And I haven't had one for a million years. You've practically wrapped it in a bow tie."

He grabbed my bow tie and ripped it off my neck.

"And there's nothing you can do to stop me."

He was right. I had no choice. If I stopped him leaving this world time would surely desintegrate and the universe would be lost. I had to make him leave. As quickly as possible.

"Pity I can't take her with me," the man lamented, looking back at Penny in the bed. Her human mind could not bear infinity. The coma proved to be her salvation and if she would ever wake up she would die instantly.

But he beared it. He beared it like no other, which had to mean the impossible. Yet I sensed his mind from the beginning and he couldn't have been. I would've known that straight away. But there was something about him. Something in his blood. Could it be?

"Who are you?" I asked again, determined to get an answer.

"WHO AM I?" he yelled back. "Should I spoil this one for you, Doctor? Should I tell you this story? Should I tell you how this one ends?

"I had the whole fabric of existence poured into my skull and I remember every second of it. All beginnings. All endings. I've read the universe back to cover, always looking in on the story and never part of it. And I've read yours, Doctor. I could tell you all the people you have forgotten, all those you have abandoned. All the people you couldn't save. Stories that ended before they ever got started. Stories that were erased. Is that it, Doctor? Are we all just stories? Is that it?"

Were you expecting more?

"...and I, its humble narrator? The student? The master? The storyteller? Who am I? I guess we will find out. I am going to rewrite history. Starting now."

Before he would activate his vortex manipulator he looked at me one last time.

"I never had a name. You had the privilege of choosing your name. Your were born in brightest sunlight and you fell so hard. I was born in desolate darkness and yet I shall rise so high. That is my destiny."

How many galaxies perished in these moments that we talked? Perhaps too many. With a final flash and a final gloat he left me in a desert of death singing a lullaby to the final dreamer, content in her mortality, finally.

I felt the weight of the universe shift to me. And the walls of reality turned transparant. Penny's bed slowly disappeared.

The Nameless didn't wait till the very end or there wouldn't have been a universe to go back to.

Now it was my memories and mind that started to fill this place. The last dam to break before time would recommence. I was keeping it on pause to save me and my friends.

As I looked into your eyes I literally flashed back into the desert. Time and space were meaningless here. I came to say goodbye to Penny and whoever she used to be.

"He never loved me," Penny told me. Her thoughts were still alive inside the glass. Her mind was faint but strong enough for a goodbye. "He thought he did. But wanting something and having something are two completely different things. And he had me for eternity. It was hell, to say the least."

"If I leave you, you'll die," I told her. She smiled as she sank deeper into the cushions.

"Don't worry, Doctor..." a voice behind me then said. His memory was still very much alive.

"I'll help her," Rory said. "I'll be here for her final moments. She won't be alone."

Good for you, Rory Williams.

Some things we forget because we must, but then you remember the good times. The good people. And those are the things that keep you fighting.

"I'm a nurse. It's okay, Doctor. Really."

"I know."

"You should go. Find Amy. Keep her safe."

Before I left, I had to tell him the truth.

"Rory, (hate to break it to you) but you're not real."

He just looked at me odd.

"Then why are you still talking to me?"

Ha. When I closed my eyes I could still see him smiling at me. Goodbye, old friend.


	37. Bitter Trials

A new batch of recruits arrived in the hospital in a mess of blood, toil, tears and guts. Some were carried in, falling apart in the hands of the nurses and doctors who carried them, because there weren't enough gurneys. Others were aided in their constant stumble before they were guided to rest upon a white bed among a hundred other wounded in the hospital's main hall.

These were boys born in the dark. Some would never see the light of day again, if not most.

Some of them would die this day; buried without a name into the earth's soil.

"Even though I had never met him before and I hadn't a clue who he was or what his beef was with me..." the Doctor said and breath escaped him. "He was right. I could change all of this. With a whiff of powder I could save one. With a time-machine I could save them all. And I did try once..."

The Doctor fidgeted with a loose piece of string poking out of the fabric of the white cloth of the bed and he neurotically tried to pry it loose, until it got longer and longer. He wrapped it around his finger until he tugged and it snapped. Then it was just a piece of string and he let it fall from his hands to the ground.

Then he looked up again and sighed relieved. They were gone, but they would be well cared for. He was fine until he remembered Spanish flu, typhus, dysentery and malaria...

"Could I have saved them all? Am I that naive? A child would think it was that easy and some days I wish I was a child. Some times I wish it were that simple again."

He wiped his nose, cleared his throat and was about to start another thought out loud...

"I'm a Time Lord..."

Then Amy's head fell against his shoulder. Her eyes shut in beautiful sleep. She snapped him out of it. She was practically glowing. In her dreams she smiled as if there wasn't a war out there brewing in the dark.

He thought of all the good things that had come out of it in the end. Alliances and conventions, laws and regulations, trade embargoes and technology!

These were dark times, but one day this would lead to global co-operation. Global awareness. Self-realization. Unification through shared suffering and common enemies. It almost made all of it sound worthwhile.

As much as anyone in this building wanted to forget all this suffering, this is the one time no-one ever should or doom history into repeating itself.

Mankind learns from its mistakes. Mankind grows. Evolves. Mankind is brilliant as much as it is foul.

These were the times that made people realize they could be better and that they should be better. Pain and loss: they define us as much as happiness or love.

And some battles weren't his to fight. They were mankind's to overcome. There are some lessons that have to be experienced, not taught. That was even true of the Doctor.

Because if we don't learn, then mankind is doomed already.

"Magnificent Amy Pond," he whispered proudly and he gently moved the weight of her head back upon the pillow.

He just smiled as he watched her and checked up on her leg. He pricked it and she twitched and frowned in her sleep. All was well.

The Doctor quietly got off the bed, tucked her in and kissed her forehead. She probably hadn't heard a word he'd said for quite some time now. It was probably for the best.

When he reached underneath the bed the walls around him suddenly came crashing down. Someone was tearing at the curtains. It was a nurse.

Two blue eyes twinkled when the Doctor turned around.

"You're leaving?" she asked and the Doctor saw right through the lie.

"You were eavesdropping?" he replied smiling and the nurse pretended otherwise as she folded up the curtains, not caring for the dried bloodstains. It appeared they were running out of supplies desperately.

"It's not often we hear such stories around here," she said.

She looked more tired than any weary soldier present for miles. Her hair had lost its frizzled shine and had just become frizzled. She hadn't blinked in ages.

"It's a shame you stopped. Was your story over? You were really entertaining the men here. Or at least the ones that stayed awake during the night. They haven't ever been this quiet."

The Doctor looked around uplifted realizing he wasn't alone. The soldiers reflected as much awe and amusement as he was showering upon them. They wanted to know how the story ended and if anything, they just didn't want the Doctor to stop talking.

"What about you?" the Doctor asked.

"What?"

"Did you like it?"

"Sort of. But who was that man in the mirror castle? Did you know him?"

"It's just a story," the Doctor smiled.

"It doesn't sound like just a story."

"What's your name?"

"Denise."

"The story still lacks an ending, doesn't it? D'you want to write it with me? It won't take long."

They sat down together on the side of Amy's bed and Denise listened. The Doctor gathered his thoughts and savoured the silence for now before a twinkle of excitement returned to his eye.

"Now, to tell the story of how we got out."


	38. Precipice

"There are literally holes in time and space where not even light can escape. Gravity wells of such immense power nothing can escape its grasp and if you stand at its edge you can feel the universe slipping through your fingers. That's where we were. Standing at the edge of the world.

At the precipice of the singularity reality itself was drained into the abyss and desintegrated one atom at a time. The mirror world was falling apart and the TARDIS was fading, drained of colour, like time eating away at old photographs and memories inside your head. The edges were burning like paper. The reality all around us was being consumed and everything burned and crumbled and died and it was beautiful.

Tell me, Denise, why are you here? And I don't mean the story, I mean _here._"

It was almost a commitment to sit down next to the Doctor. She thought she'd amuse him. She'd already invested so much into the stories of every soldier. You can't ask people to trust you and not grant them some in return.

"Don't know," she said and she turned her gaze to the ceiling. She smiled cheekily at the soldiers who were close enough to listen. "My sister dragged me here, I guess. The army needed everyone, so we decided to do our bit for the war effort. The first couple of days I was terrified of course that I almost couldn't bear it, but after a while I started to look around this place and these people and I thought to myself: it's good that I'm here. They need me."

A touch of solace laced her every sigh.

"If I wasn't here, who knows what would've happened? I saved lives today and that's brilliant. I'm only on break because they forced me to. They told me to get some sleep but I can't. This lot, they'll be shipped inland tomorrow. They'll be someone else's problem, except I think I'll miss them. I'll remember all their faces. I think...I think someone should."

The Doctor smiled.

"Someone should," he repeated proudly. He choked up and an ancient tear glistened brand new. 

"Will you remember me?"

"As long as you finish the story," the indomitable Denise said. In her sore eyes he could tell she'd been crying too.

There were so many things he could've said. He could've told Denise what he told Amy in the face of death and bring despair into the heart of so many soldiers... It wasn't that long ago that he used to be one, relatively, which was another broken promise. He promised Amy he would keep her safe.

"I brought Amy to Paris because I wanted her to have fun," the Doctor said. "She missed out on her wedding, because I'd ruined it. What fiancée? I'm really a bad influence, Denise. Be glad you don't know me, but if you could only know about Amy. Oh, she's so strong. She's dazzling.

She stood at the heart of the fire and never flinched. She didn't even blink. She was beyond frozen with fright: she was fighting and looking for ways to keep fighting. Surviving. She turned to me and asked what we should do. Full of faith. Really, what could I have told her other than how sorry I was? I dread the day I'd let her down.

I was going to save Amelia Pond from certain destruction. I had to. The question was how, not when. Theoretically I had all the time in the world. And I could lose..._basically_ _everything_. Or let five people die. Including me.

Seriously. There would come a time when I would face my end. There would come a day when the Doctor would die. Luckily it wasn't that day.

The glass edge singed and sang and there were cloister bells pounding the insides of my ears. Amy was screaming when the fire got too close but that's when I realized something. We clasped arms and I laughed. She thought I'd gone mad.

"Can't you hear it? Listen!"

With every exploding atom time and space were unleashed into the ether. The glass dimension was melting around us like a chocolate castle in the middle of summer, accompanied by the sound of crystal resounding and clashing with the bellowing of bells. Everything was collapsing! Boom! Bam! Bash! Kaput! And then there was the non-void and the anti-time and the space between spaces not to mention the fire, but there was one more thing as we all began to become buried under the weight and the sands of time.

The glass around us crumbled and burned. The TARDIS was shedding its glass skin only to reveal ghostly replicas within, transparant like darkness. Except it wasn't transparant and it wasn't dark. It was another dimension breaking though into ours now that it was at its weakest point. Seconds before total destruction.

A piercing signal was trying to break through the barriers of time itself just to find me. And all this time it had been leaving messages on my answering machine just to make sure I was okay. Except this time was different. This time I was going to pick up the phone. Thank the annoying telemarketer! Told you I'd work it in somehow! _Emergency Programme One!"_

The Doctor smiled, prodded Denise's forehead and then snapped his fingers upon realizing:

"Oh. You weren't there for that bit, were you? Long story short, it was my TARDIS. _The real TARDIS. _Time and Relative Dimension in Space. My ship. Homing in on its lost pilot, like a loyal st. Bernard dog rescuing its owner from the clutches of an avalanche. My girl had come for me. For all of us.

The TARDIS was attempting to lock on to me. And it had the benefit of not being bound to temporal dogma. It started to materialize all around us.

"Amelia Pond! Captain Jack! Nemo and poor old Simon! I can get you home!"

"Doctor?" Jack asked.

"Go on, Captain! Kiss Amy!" I said while ramming the spacey wacey compatibility lever into place. I nearly burned my hand 'cause the place was still technically on fire. " Ow! Everything's going to be all right!"

The signal now became nearly deafening for all humans. "All right! I can hear you!" I yelled back.

"Doctor, what are you doing? You promised me!" Nemo yelled.

Two TARDISSES collided. One real one and one fake one and the fake one crumbled in its shadow.

"THAT'S MY GIRL! Come on! YOU CAN DO IT!"

It was like watching a hatchling break through the eggshell, a submarine crashing through a layer of ice...like watching a phoenix rise from its ashes.

With it came a tremendous storm. A storm inside a bottle. The dam was about to break. All of time was about to crash down upon us just as it would have before, except now we had a ship!

More explosions taunted the TARDIS. She was taking one hell of a beating to get here. I kissed the console first chance I got.

I took the TARDIS just a second out of sync with the rest of time and let the waves pass. Just in time too because the glass reality had all but faded into non-existence. We were laughing because we had survived. 

"We're SURFING!" I told Amy as we were both hanging on to the railings of the TARDIS.

"The seconds are separating!"

Imagine as it were reality suffocating because of a lump in the back of its throat, except its nothing like that. Better yet, imagine a boulder blocking the path of a river until the water keeps building up against it...and then think of the exact opposite of that because it couldn't be more wrong. 

We were riding the shockwave straight on till morning. Time was finally allowed to breathe again, as it were, finally allowed to move, finally allowed to live...

I doubt anyone inside the cataclysm even realized what had happened as they were finally freed again. For every space its time and for every time its place. I couldn't help but wonder what happened at the heart of the storm and what it must've been like: all that time and space clumped together trapped in a big ball of...stuff.

And then there was a _bang_ and a _boom _and a _vavoom_ and a big old _vworp vworp_ because it was turbulence and a hell of a lot of noise. I drummed Amy's back when the stuff ended but then a vicious push knocked me down on the floor again. The TARDIS suffered tremors. Then there were the cloyster bells. The alarms. Piercing another dimension had seriously put her through the wringer.

A good old kick up the backside sent her flying again but then I zapped myself on the console. Static electricity. Must've been a coincidence.

"We're not in the clear yet! Jack! Push that button over there! Amy! Keep this levelled!"

Apart from some _zaps_ and some mild short-circuitry and one mild nervous breakdown we were doing fine. Remarkably well for people who had just nearly died. I smiled down at them. Oh, you should've seen the looks on their faces. They had no idea how lucky they were.

"You have no idea how lucky you are," I told them. I then proceeded to activate the handbrake and I might have burnt a fuse in the process. Sparks were flying over my head.

"Sorry, dear..."

"Doctor, where are we?" Amy asked. "What just happened? Am I dreaming?"

"Paris. Death. And possibly," I answered. "You might want to check out the front door. I'm positive I didn't run into another shed. Or at least I might have. And we might want to get out before there's another fire."

We huddled at the door and opened it to reveal a bright grey sky beneath us.

"Where is it?" Amy asked and then her hair started to drop up. Simon grabbed her when it seemed like she was going to levitate out the TARDIS doors. Her necklace started dangling in front of her nose.

Then she looked up to a city of lights. Artificial gravity inside the TARDIS kept her from falling up at the Earth.

"We're upside down!" Amy said and Jack laughed.

"What'd you mean upside down?" I said. "Can't be."

"Well, you're clearly wrong!"

"The TARDIS is never wrong! We're not upside down. The Earth isn't rightside up!"

"I'm getting dizzy..."

"How are you holding up, Simon?" I asked and I patted him on the back. He instinctively jumped and moved away from the door.

"You're mad," Amy told me.

"Aint that the truth," Jack reiterated.

"We almost died," Amy said.

"But we didn't," I said. "There was a hole in time and I plugged it."

"Well, when you say it like that it doesn't sound so glamorous all of a sudden!"

"Where's the fun in that?" Jack smiled.

It became time to bring her back down and do some damage control. I feared we hadn't seen the last of this new nameless threat.

I looked up at the beautiful world that had almost been lost and felt relief before I closed the doors.

I put out some fires at the console fueled by the fresh air with a handy fire extinguisher while Simon stared out into nothing at the foot of the stairs.

"Are you all right?" Amy asked and he nodded, before he looked back over his shoulder at me. He'd read all the reports but he'd never experienced it firsthand. I listened on because that's what I do. I can't help it. I'm an eavesdropper. I frequently drop eaves. What are eaves anyway? And why's everyone so upset about people dropping them all the time?

"I've seen..." Simon de Leeuw said and his voice had turned to gravel. He cleared his throat. "I don't know what I've seen."

Then I saw his gaze drift down below the glass floor at the nomad below. The man without a ship. The man without a past. And no future. I promised him both.

Jack was holding up nicely despite his wound. At this point in time he had no idea how many lives he would end up throwing away. But who was I to judge?

"Paris!" I cried and landed atop the Eiffel Tower with a nasty bump. I hoped there was still room. What she needed was a good night's sleep and maybe a changed lightbulb or two. I think I left a box of them in the attic.

The door creaked when I pushed it open and a crowd of people gasped at us in the light of the setting sun. But there was something we weren't seeing. A group of them were crowded around something. A body.

I couldn't help but think the worst.

"What happened?" Amy asked and those that had tried to help gave way for her to see.

"Doctor..." she said and I remembered her words well. She flung herself by his side to try and save him. Anything to feel a pulse or sense a breath. He was right next to me when it happened. Right at the centre of the blast...

The veil of tears fell. Then confusion. How could this have happened? How could I have let this happen?

"It's Nikola, Doctor..." she said and I froze. "It's Nikola Tesla, but it can't be. He's dead, Doctor!"

I let myself fall against the TARDIS and I felt the wooden corner sting the hollow of my back as I embraced her sides. This wasn't meant to happen.

I didn't know what to do.

_"Doctor!"_


	39. Save Me

There was a full moon that day but I was the only one to see it.

The beginnings of a huge thunderstorm were coalescing above us, only to be cast adrift on a northern wind to wreak havoc in the city of Boulogne, on the night of the 6th of May 1889.

On the 31st of May the South Fork Dam will collapse to kill over 2,200 people in and around Johnstown, Pennsylvania in America. They're not connected (I think). It just happens.

On the 6th of June, a month from now, the Great Seattle Fire will ravage through the city. No fatalities.

"But, Doctor..." Denise said. "That all happened years ago. We're talking about 1889. That is not now."

"It used to be now. Then it was then. Just like tomorrow will be now tomorrow and will become yesterday the day after that."

"Yes, I get that, but Doctor..."

"So what if time could stop, like it did on the 6th of May 1889? What would physically happen at the heart of the storm? What happened to Nikola Tesla?"

He died 1889 instead of 1943. Aged 44. Forty-four years of unequaled brilliance, lost. Half a life. All the inventions he made. All the power he'd unleash. All the heads he'd turn. All the minds he'd inspire and the people he would meet, and all the lives he would change!

What would happen to Thomas Edison and the war of the currents? No wireless radio. Or wireless power. Edison would win the Nobel Prize! We can't let that happen! And what would happen to Samuel Clemens?

Time was changing in that very instant. Every second that passed was one second we drifted away from the original universe. Timelines were separated again. No longer islanded in a stream of stars, we were adrift on its mighty current heading towards a waterfall. The sun had set only to become a whole new dawn never seen before.

The universe had been affected and I could feel it like waves hitting me over and over.

"We killed him, Doctor," Amy said. "He's dead. How's that even possible?"

"Everything's possible," I said nervous. "Time's always in flux. Time can be altered. Time _can_ be rewritten."

"You've said that before. You said sometimes it can't. How do you know this isn't one of those times?"

"BECAUSE NIKOLA TESLA IS DEAD."

I lost my temper. I was nervous. I was shaking. I was THINKING and she was interrupting me. And it certainly didn't help that Jack was rushing me, constantly reminding me that the general's forces would surely make their way to the top soon.

Of course they were desperate to find out what had happened. Human curiosity always getting in the way. Don't they have airplanes to invent somewhere? Or basketballs?

"No_ Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court," _I whispered.

"No," Amy said. "Just a Scottish girl on the Eiffel Tower scared out of her mind! Tell us what to do, Doctor."

"Doctor, they're coming," Jack said and he was right. We didn't have much time. But did we have hope?

There was something in the corner of my mind. Something was wrong. Time was literally running out. _Again._

Simon looked at me, and my police box, my TARDIS, and his mouth sort of...moved...without making any sound. I knew what he was thinking.

A full moon shone through the gliding clouds and no-one was looking at my spaceship. Well, they did but not the way I wanted them to. This was definitely not the triumphant return I was hoping for.

I mean, I get where they're coming from. Just when they thought it was all over out comes another alien hiding from within their midst and so I think I broke their minds. Just a tiny bit.

And I think I broke time as well. I broke human history and there was no way to fix it.

No doubt, it was the greatest magic trick ever pulled. I made the Eiffel Tower disappear and then had it reappear out of thin air. There was no way I could top that. I can't bring back the dead...

And in my mind's eye I saw Rory and Penny and all the people I'd ever lost...

The weight of the universe is sometimes a bit heavy for just two shoulders to bear.

_"The universe is unfair,"_ that's what he'd said. The Nameless.

The Doctor looked into her eyes and for a second there he startled her.

For a second Denise forgot he was addressing her. She had completely removed herself from the picture completely immersed in his story. Maybe that's why she managed so well here, because of her ability to disconnect herself from everything around her. Sometimes she felt like a ghost wandering the halls but not really there. In the hospital she was just going through the motions, looking at every face and knowing what it meant. What would they have to face when they got back home?

"A million is just a number," the Doctor said as his eyes wandered from face to face. Most of the soldiers were sleeping. The dreaming Amy looked like an angel amidst the fallen warriors, bloodied and gritted. Then he smiled at Denise. "One is a tragedy."

The grandfather clock chimed six times.

"I wish I could give this story a happy ending. I'm really trying."

Denise felt it too.

"Then just be honest," she said and the old man sighed.

"People die. People always die...and I can't help them...

Simon was the first to state the obvious, calling for help several miles atop the Eiffel Tower where all help would always be too late.

"Someone get a doctor!" Simon cried out. _Ha._ "Someone call the police!"

Simon the coward. Simon the office clerk. Always punctual, prim and honest and never a spot on his jacket. Magnificent moustache. He feared me. With good reason. They all did.

I turned my mind's eye back one hour and looked around at all their faces staring at the end of the universe.

There was Buffalo Bill and his men, Annie Oakley the best sharpshooter in the world and Sitting Bull the Sioux all the way from America. There were the men of science and the men of culture. The women of wealth and the men of fine taste. And Bernárd.

They were all looking at me now but I had to shut out their current faces in order to see their past versions in my memory. The longer it took the more it would slip away.

We'd somehow entered the glass zone but all the others didn't. What changed?

"Simon, Amy, Jack, Nemo and me..." I thought out loud. What did we have in common?

"Jack was dead, Amy unconscious and so was Simon and Nemo..." I concluded loudly and Amy was hanging by my every word.

She found a glimmer of hope in my confusion, thinking it was a good thing. She grabbed my collar and pulled me closer. The absence of the bow tie put her off.

"Doctor, we killed Nikola Tesla!" Amy cried.

"You don't have to let the whole world know!" I hissed back. People were watching and suddenly I cared.

"What will happen to time now he's dead? This wasn't supposed to happen. What did we change?"

I gasped to find the right word. "Everything..." 

I then wondered whether it had been Nikola in the glass dimension. Whether it had been his mind crafting that _nameless _persona, swallowed by time...Thousands of years trapped inside no-man's land can change a man. Maybe that's why I didn't recognise him. Or maybe his mental vision of himself is a generous one. But would he have ditched the moustache?

I looked deep into Amy's eyes and clasphed her hands as I tried to explain: "Nikola and I were at the heart of the storm. The very centre. Somehow I made it through the rift intact. Your minds were dormant. You slipped through unaffected..."

"Except Nikola didn't..."

Human minds are so weak!

"You killed him..." Amy said.

I couldn't believe she just said that. I couldn't believe she was blaming me. It's not always my fault. Even when it is, I don't like to admit it. I killed him...

"It wasn't my fault!" I whinged. "I saved you... Why are you all looking at me like that? I've got a spaceship. And a rocking bow tie!"

Then I felt my neck. It was gone.

"I'm cool..." I whinged desperately.

How much had I changed? What happened to the world in our absence?

"This is why I don't usually stick around for the end!" I grumpily remarked. "People start pointing fingers! Humans...looking for a scapegoat..."

"Doctor..." Jack said holding on tight to the wound in his pale gut.

They didn't know it, but history had been altered. I felt rattled. Panicked. Things were about to kick off and unfold in untold directions and who knows what the outcome would be? I could feel it in my gut. I'm a Time Lord. It's instinct.

"This is what he does," Simon said distraught. "This is what he always does. He leaves death and destruction in his wake...I should've known better..."

"Stop it," Bernárd told him. "The Doctor saved us! You owe him more than that!"

"You don't know him!" Simon said. "You don't know what he's like!"

"I know the Doctor," Bernárd said. He put his faith in me. He shouldn't have.

The survivors had already been amassing inside the lift to get as far away from us as possible. They couldn't wait to go home and forget all that had happened, like a bad dream.

Only the brave and the foolish were left standing around Nikola's body. Out of respect for their fallen comrade Bill and his crew were already attempting to carry the body down.

I sonicked the body again as they gathered around. Then when someone touched his skin something happened.

"Wait!" I told them and the company froze. "Do that again."

_**-"But wait," Denise said. "I've heard that name before. Nikola Tesla. He didn't die. He's still alive!"**_

When it happened again I crouched down beside Nikola to feel his pulse. I turned his wrist over and saw his watch had stopped at the moment the crack in time and space had opened.

Someone had closed his eyes but I had to open them again, hoping there was still activity behind those pupils somewhere. Any spark of electricity within his brilliant brain...

Then I looked at his watch again.

"Eu-reka!" I yelled. "I might just have it. Seriously, I'm stoked! Oh, this hasn't happened in a while. A genuine medical mystery and you've got just the right man for the job! Annie!"

"What?"

"Listen to me very carefully," I told her. "Don't be alarmed. Just take two very deep breaths because I'm going to ask you something that'll probably freak you out. Are you ready?"

"Doctor, what are you doing?" Amy asked but I shushed her with one raised finger.

"Will it save this man?" Annie asked.

"No," I said. "And yes."

I could tell Bill was desperately looking for eyecontact but Annie would have none of it. She only had eyes for me.

"What'd you want me to do?" she said with her beautiful accent.

"Good. I want you to shoot him."

"What?"

"Shoot Nikola. It'll make sense in a minute, don't worry."

"Can't it make sense now?"

"If he's dead, he won't feel it," I said. "And if he's alive, he definitely won't feel it."

"You want me to shoot a body?"

"Doctor, what are you saying?" Amy said, catching on. But mostly she was putting out fires by acting as my translator. "You're saying the bullet won't hurt the body?"

"Of course it won't!" Bill cried out. "The man's dead!"

"Not exactly," I said. "He looks dead, but isn't. He's actually, more or less, on ice. Frozen, as it were. And a teensy bit listening to our conversation. Because you are listening, aren't you Nikola?"

I lifted his eyelids again. His pupils were dilated this time. I felt the distortion with every touch of his skin. As if he were drenched in anti-time and trapped outside of causality. Like a conscious aneasthetic patient, except he's experiencing time vastly different from our perspective. He's slowed down.

Think of time and space and everything as fabric and we're all rag dolls. Living breathing, walking, talking living dolls! And Nikola's been cut out of the tapestry, disconnected and his energy was slipping away in suspended animation, not even suspended animation...  
His lifeforce was oscillating, neither dead or alive, drifting unchecked into the fault lines of the universe. The crack had still not healed entirely. That would take time.

We had to rewire Nikola and patch him up. There had to be a way. There was still time to fix everything.

"I'm cool..." I smiled. I shook off my grumpiness like a wet dog.

Jack collapsed. The wound had finally gotten the better of him.

"Amy, Simon, get Nikola into the TARDIS."

Jack called my name in pain, because he obviously didn't want to be left behind. And miss all the action. Except he'd seen enough that day.

"Buffalo Bill Cody," I told the eponymous cowboy. "Take care of my friend. He's earned it."

"But what about you, Doctor?" Bill asked. "Where are you going?"

"I'm off to save history," I said and then turned round by the TARDIS door. "_Again_...It's a weird sort of day, isn't it?"

"Good luck to you then, you mad mad doctor!" he told me as he shook my hand.

"Oh, it's good to be back!"

"Doctor!" Bernárd grabbed my attention just before I was off. Bright lights from the balloons were shining directly at me so I could barely see his face.

"What's going to happen to me?" he asked and I only had the simplest and most complicated answer to give him.

"You'll live."

It took him barely two seconds to understand the gravitas of those two words. He's clever. I liked him.

"Thank you, Doctor," he beamed and he was about to run off.

"Bernárd..." I said and he turned back. There was one last thing left to say before the end.

"Thank you..." I said to him.

We clung to hope in this starlit night of storms. Because it's all we have, really.

As the TARDIS dematerialized into dusk Jack looked to the next time he'd see me again, when he'd find me, which he knew he would.

Bernárd held his hand to help with the pain. We all need a hand to hold in the end.

"What did you mean?" Jack asked the boy. "What did you ask the Doctor?"

"Doesn't matter," Bernárd said. "That's all over now."

"Think so? I'd like that. Argh."

"Don't move," Bernárd told him. "It'll hurt more."

Jack smiled.

"The Doctor told me I was going to die. That I had to die. I was...I was going to write my final word on the Tower and become the body lying in the labs. But that wasn't me. I was terrified all day, aching, because of what they told me. Because of what I saw. But it's over now."

"What body?"

"The elevator's coming up!" Bill Cody roared at the pair of them. "Hang on there, son! We'll be down soon!"

Jack grabbed Bernárd's collar. His sleeve slid down his arm to expose his leather wrist strap and the device Bernárd had seen inside.

"WHAT BODY?"


	40. A Few Good Men

Gustave Eiffel's hands were shaking.

"Tell me what happened," the general asked.

He had been interviewing witnesses to the spectacle from dusk till dawn. He hadn't slept or eaten. Usually around that time of day it would've been time for his second breakfast but he skipped it that morning. He would only feed on information that day. I know of species in the Viridia Monassaria cluster that literally do. One-eyed creatures called Oracles that literally starved to death when they were all out of things to say to each other and similarly the general grew tired of the constant pauses in the conversation. Eiffel grew weary of repeating his story.

A servant boy brought the architect a drink but all the old man could see in his eyes was his son. The general quickly dismissed the boy.

"There was a light and a door," Eiffel said when he remembered the hour he spent in the dark trapped in the catacombs of Paris. "The Doctor saved my life."

"That wasn't what you said before," the general persisted.

"What did I say before?"

"That it wasn't supposed to have happened."

He wasn't the only one to obfuscate what little truth they thought they knew.  
Buffalo Bill Cody laughed in the general's face. He had no respect for bureaucrats like him.

"The Doctor's one weird fellow," he said. "But I like him. He's smart. And funny. Not afraid to get his hands dirty."

Annie Oakley kept going on about how she would shoot any pirate that dared to come back, while the Native American Sioux Sitting Bull never acknowledged any one of the general's answers. He just sort of stared into the dark. Afterwards, the general could've sworn he heard both of them laughing.

I imagine it wasn't one of the general's better days trapped in the same room with people constantly saying good things about me. I tend to have that effect. Of course, others weren't as generous as Bill Cody. Most of them were barely aware of what had gone on. Some thought I'd endangered their lives. Others barely got half of the conversation right when they spoke of how I put the entire universe in jeopardy. Or saved it.

But there was one man who got the whole story. The intrepid reporter I called him. The accuser. I stood accused.

"I warned you, didn't I?" he told the general as the room filled with cigarette smoke.

Simon de Leeuw was a good man. A timid and quiet man, never before known for his temper, only his secrets. So he fit right in with an organization that dealt with them. He was MI-6 before there even was an MI-6. UNIT before there was a UNIT.  
He started as just a pen-pusher. Simon had never dared to stand up for anything before.

But he'd read about me. Researched me. Followed me. I would dare say he was a fan. He read about my history in files like pulp adventure novels. Gobbling them up. But there was always something in the back of his head nagging at him.

It wasn't envy. Or maybe it was. It wasn't even anger. Something was simply wrong. He had an eye for injustice. But I never said I was just.

"I would've arrested him if I could have," Simon told the general.

Humans. Whatever happened to you? You used to be cavedwelling scavengers drawing with animal blood or plant die on cavern walls. Huddled together in the dark around a flickering flame, fighting for survival across the tundras of Africa a million lightyears away in the past.

Now look at you.

This ordinary man stood among the biggest of characters the universe had ever seen and he told us off with a wag of his finger. Mankind ever going where angels fear to tread. Good for you!

Was he wrong?

No.

We had raced off into the sunset, one last run, to save Nikola Tesla from dying.

"Okay! We're gonna do this, Simon! Amy!" I said. "We're gonna save history!"

I ran to the console aiming to impress or dazzle, trying to make everyone forget about all the bad. Trying to make myself forget.

And in the process I'd forgotten all about Nemo.

"Oh."

I remembered my promise to him while Simon only remembered the crimes and threats he had made against so many people. Amy remembered when she was inside his mind. And Nemo remembered things that never happened, but did. New memories of a new life emerged from within him as time was being rewritten.

His ship was lost in time. All the other Nemoes erased. There was only one now. Like _Highlander_.

"NO!" Nemo screamed. Good, the voices were back. "That never happened!"

I pointed Simon and Amy to the chairs where they could lay down Nikola. Amy didn't realize Jack had been left behind in France until the TARDIS had fully well departed. 

"Where's Jack?" she insisted to know.

"In a better place," I answered absently. Timing's not her best asset. My eyes were fixed on Nemo's fragile mind. He could snap at any second or fall apart. His mind was being rewritten.

The walls were closing in on him. The TARDIS suddenly wasn't that big on the inside anymore. Not to him.

The TARDIS experienced more turbulence then. Her spacial dampeners were still recuperating and there were still some glitches that needed to be fixed, but generally soaking up the remaining rift energy had done her good. Apart from a few sparks and bumps.

Nemo was standing in the mouth of madness and it would take him everything to not get eaten.

"Nemo, listen to me. The memories you're experiencing now are your own. They're yours. They're real. They happened."

"This is not who I am! What are you doing to me? This didn't happen!"

"Trust me. They did. This is your life. Didn't I tell you? This is your life rewinding itself. Spinning backwards towards the present. Tell us what you see, Nemo. Tell us about your life."

He was hyperventilating. I looked over to Amy and Simon but it was already too late. I could barely catch him as he fell and fainted. Struck by dizziness, Nemo turned pale and clung to the railings while he half laid on the floor while the whole of time and space was filling up the holes in his mind.

The timeline was healing itself and Nemo experienced it real-time.

The TARDIS console was still hot to the touch, almost as if she was cross. I had to reassure her we were almost there.

"Why are you helping that man?" Simon said.

If it had been any other man but me he would've hesitated. Any normal man and he would've sympathized. But not me. We wielded the power of the gods and with that power came responsibilities.

"He did this! He doesn't care! He doesn't care about anyone!"

"He didn't do this," I told Simon and I gripped the railings heaving back and forth with every breath. I was angry.

Angry at myself.

"I did." 

Sometimes you have to stop running. Sometimes you have to own up to your mistakes and admit when you were wrong. Take responsibility for your actions. I did this. Simon was right.  
Right from the very beginning.

I try to do better but people always die. Stories always end and not all of them have happy endings. Especially mine.

"The Doctor will fix it," Amy told Simon. "He always does."

"He travels through our lives like a man skimming through a book and writing himself into our stories. And does he ever consider the lives he changes? The lives he leaves behind? By what right, I ask? This time-machine is an abomination!"

And yet it had just saved his life! Give credit where credit is due.

Suddenly out of nowhere Nikola Tesla returned to life and started to scream and convulse like a man on fire. He was breaking through. There was still a part of him connected. He could still be saved. And I knew it.

I did a double take, looked from Nemo to Nikola and back again and still managed to beat Simon to the bench they had propped him on so I could keep him back, but before I could even manage to utter the words: 'Don't touch him!' he'd stopped. Like it had never happened.

Except for the smoke that was slowly rising from his jacket begged to differ. Simon pushed my arm away. 

I was smiling and I really shouldn't have. That was wrong of me. Bad Doctor. 

"Are you enjoying this?" Simon said.

I ran back to the TARDIS controle panel. Internal sensors would do the trick.

"Something's blocking the signal. Time's trying to heal itself, but something's stopping it...oh."

"Oh, what?" Amy said. "OH WHAT, Doctor?"

It's like we removed an exotic animal from its natural habitat. He can't adjust. He can't fit in. He can't connect with this world. This is not his world. He's dying.

"Something happened to time," I said, becoming more frantic with every passing second. "This is a wound in time. He is wounded. He IS the wound!" 

A high pitched scream filled the TARDIS and then something started banging on the outside of the door. And again, as if something was scratching it violently, trying to get in. Claws started to shake the TARDIS. Then there was more screaming. More scratching. The TARDIS overloaded with sparks as it fought off these attacks and the lights went down before it switched to secondary back-up lighting. A dark moody green hue descended upon the control room.

"They're here," I said and perhaps I should've sounded less scared there. I didn't mean to frighten them. The monsters did.

"For Nikola," I added.

The Reapers had come to heal the wound in time just like they had before. Incredible creatures. Vultures sapping away at the age of the TARDIS and draining the power. Poor girl wasn't done defending us. But I wasn't called the Doctor for nothing. 

"What's happening? What's out there?" Simon asked.

"Monsters," Amy said facing the door. "From the time-vortex."

When the banging grew louder she flinched but she wouldn't give up.

"Doctor," she said staring at the TARDIS doors. "I'm really tired. The guy I fancied was just put on a bus and we're about to be devoured like a can of worms. Can we please finish this?"

Her wish was my command.

"I thought you'd never ask!" I said as I socked the wibbley lever. That really hurt.

This wasn't the time nor place. I thought I could shake off Simon and the Nameless's words but they had dug deeper than I thought.  
I felt as if I had been the one disconnected from time and desperate to reconnect, not Nikola.

Saving him would not save me, but that wasn't why I was doing it. I did it because it was the right thing to do.

Smooth sailing turned to turbulent waters. The shrieks of the temporal creatures faded but they would be back. Now it was time to return to Earth. Bring Nikola back to his natural habitat.

Paris was about to suffer another massive blackout. The first of many.

The general was still holding his interviews by candle light. He was restless. I think he was trying to get back at me somehow or find me like a hunter tracks its prey through the tracks I left behind. But where I went he could not folow. All that was left were the impressions I had left on the people I had met. Their stories would survive me after I was long gone.

After so many hours trapped in that dank office the general was about to give up, because he'd heard the same stories over a dozen times now, just told from different perspectives. And in every story I was there. Just out of his reach. He was beginning to lose his patience with this game.

He would soon have to start writing his report to Prime Minister Sadi Carnot and he wasn't going to be happy about the results.

I'd already been banished by Queen Victoria and I didn't need the French to add to that. Napoleon was worse enough.

The ripples of the temporal meltdown had left most of the world completely oblivious. The farther away from the centre of the rift the less they had felt its effects. Carnot was in his office in Paris when it struck and he was no doubt now looking for a scapegoat, as all politicians do.

"Who is this Nemo?" the general asked Simon. The Dutchman nervously pulled his own moustache.

"More stories..." Simon said. "Too many to count."

"Just tell me one," the general replied brusk.

"I'll tell you his. You think the story may start with Jules Verne's novel. Remember that? Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. _Fout. _The evolution of this character is a tangled woven web of half-truths and lies. Nobody knows the truth. Not even Nemo himself. The Doctor changed history. The Doctor changed his memories. He didn't even know who he was."

"You're testing my patience."

"But we were about to find out," Simon said. "I asked him when his senses returned to him. I faced the man and made him look at Tesla. I wanted to know. I asked him what he felt. Whether he cared at all. And he just looked at miss Pond. He just looked at her. I can't describe it."

"Why her?"

"I don't know. But I think because...because he didn't know how to feel. Or at least that's what the Doctor said. He asked miss Pond what she felt."

"What did she say?"

"Nothing. None of them did. I don't know who those people were but they weren't human. They were just as disconnected from the world as Nikola was. I don't know. Maybe I was too.

"Maybe that's what happens when you travel with the Doctor. You lose something of yourself along the way. Travel long enough and you'll eventually lose your humanity. You're no longer living. You're visiting other people's lives. The Doctor doesn't have any friends. They don't know him. Not even Amy knows the Doctor. I've studied him for years and I haven't even scratched the surface. I knew less about the Doctor than I did about Nemo. At least Nemo was honest."

"What did he look like?"

"The Doctor?"

"Nemo."

"Thin, like a wraith. Slightly darker skin, but pale and depraved, frail like a starving man and eyes like someone who had just seen a ghost; lost and bewildered, the streak of wildebeast and an animal trapped inside the body of a prince. He was dangerous and violent, but there was something in the way he lit up in his waking moments...I don't know, but it scared me. More than it did the violence. He looked straight through me..."

Simon clutched his silver necklace and kissed the cross hanging around his neck. 

"It's the same look the Doctor has all the time," he concluded.

**"Why are you telling me all this, Doctor?" **Denise asked and he smiled.

"Look at you lot," the Doctor said as he looked around the hospital from face to face. Beaming.

"You're not lions lead by donkeys. You're brave."

The Doctor didn't like soldiers. He'd been one himself. Yet he saw the plight in their eyes. He saw them.

"Was Nikola Tesla more important than ten of you? Or a hundred?"

The Doctor wanted to say yes, but he couldn't. He couldn't bear to say those words. Or even think it. He slid a sweaty hand across his mouth. Thought pounded his brain.

"Who determines who is important? Who gets to do that? By what right? Do I? Does time itself? Can time not be rewritten? By what right do I judge you little?

That's why the Time Lords swore never to interfere. To only watch time unfold. But then they created weapon after weapon, nightmare after nightmare and the war to end all wars. And for once all the important people died and all the little people lived.

That day, fittingly, was the anniversary of the Storming of the Bastille. The little people taking down the big people. What right did they have? They had every right. Power brings responsibility. And when you have the power to change time itself...

That's why I have so many rules...

And Gustave Eiffel's hands didn't stop shaking because he knew. And Simon knew.

Saving Nikola was easy. I just had to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow. Quite literally since his neutrons were all in the wrong order. Took quite a punch to fire up Frankenstein's monster. Nikola Tesla was already brilliant, but we simply made him impossible. His work would inspire millions.

But saving history came at a price. And we knew that from the beginning.

I always wonder whether I knew all along and I just didn't want to know. Maybe I lied to myself. Rule one. I left Jack with Bernárd knowing what would happen, didn't I? I told myself I was busy.

I was juggling too many balls and I was bound to drop one. I was destined to drop one. I was busy saving Nikola, busy saving the world, busy CARING about the IMPORTANT PEOPLE.

The night Bernárd died was one of the coldest nights in the history of Paris, like all of the heat had been sucked out of the day. A small drizzle turned to snow.

It was a Monday. 


	41. Parting Words

The meticulous lad even tried to keep the spot where he would die relatively clean. And he was brave. So brave. And so utterly utterly terrified as anyone would be.

Bernárd had stood there by the bulkhead before, imagining how his final moments would play out, and in hindsight it felt like a rehearsal.

The boy broke into laughter as he sank to his knees knowing what would happen next in this divine comedy. He could no longer remember his lines. He could only think of what he would've done, in the year of Neverwas and the time of Neverwhen.

I think he would've tried to make amends and do the right thing. And he was doing it then.

He never once felt at ease in his life: always travelling, always moving and never in the place he ought to be. Trapped between a rock and a hard place. If society had tolerated it he could've stood at his father's side with pride. Of course, then there was the uncertainty.

But in the final moments of his life there was none. He was terrified but something inside him was telling him that this was the place where he had to be. Even if he didn't want to.

It was the second time he'd seen that dawn that day, for both of them. But only one of them would live to see the night.

And the second time around, living through that fateful day, would prove to be much easier than before now that time had been rewritten, but I didn't know how much. The Nemoes had been ripped from the pages of history. Everything was still in flux. The rift in time had closed in every second and yet people remembered. They remembered two very different days. Bernárd would only remember one.

He'd told Jack everything and of course the captain knew what it all had to mean. He knew it more than anyone. The boy and the body and the body and the boy.

Jack zapped him into the past with the last remaining power in his vortex manipulator, taking him to his death. Shot him when he tried to run away. The poor boy didn't stand a chance.

"But he promised..."

Reality started to dawn on him. The word had been carved into his mind as much as it had been carved into the bulkhead. Or at least, as it would be. He hadn't put it there yet.

"You saved me before. In the tunnels," Bernárd told Jack. "You could've just left me there in the first place and none of this would've happened."

"Yeah..." Jack replied, smiling faintly. One day had felt like a hundred years and someday the feeling would be reversed for him.

Jack knew the boy's death would anchor the fledgling fluctuating outcomes to a single fixed point. Everything else would draw around that conclusion. Time would fix itself, with only minor anomalies, and Jack the soldier knew what needed to be done. I ran from the outcome. Jack didn't.

History would forget Bernárd's sacrifice but Jack never would. Nor I.

Some stories need to be told. There's never just collateral damage. There are good people caught in every blast.

A new day dawned on the city of lights. Come nightfall Jack would find us again.

A curtain of falling wet snow had just faded into the dark when the bells of the Notre Dame chimed midnight. The sound of Emmanuel would have any man quiver in his boots.

The TARDIS materialized in a patch of wet grass; one out of four circling a monument at the centre of this Parisian square. The monument was a plaster sculpture of a very confident looking woman standing atop a decorated globe which was in turn carried by a triumphant cart pulled by two magnificent lions guided by two women, a man and two children. Their faces full of hope.

'The Triumph of the Republic' it was called, built to inaugurate the centennial celebrations of the French revolution.

The statues looked out in the distance to the west where the July Column stood at the centre of the Place de la Bastille.

But this was the Place de la Nation (or Place du Trône or Place du Trône-Renversé depending on the time. I bet Neanderthals just called it 'grassy knoll'.) A square of perfect circles within circles in the shade of the trees and at its entrance stood two tall columns surmounted by the statues of kings Philip II and Louis IX.

I wondered whether royal blood had been spilled in this square.

None in the city got any real sleep that night. Carriages were still for not a soul would've dared to go out into the streets afraid of the ghosts and echoes of the past and future. It would take time for the fear of Eiffel's Tower to pass and that superstition to die. There'd be protests, obviously, complaints and lots of bad poetry about the Tower for many years to come but those people would fade away while Eiffel's metal Tower would withstand the tides of time. But still it would be hard to live in its shadow till century's end had passed.

The city was quiet when finally the bells died down. Not even dogs barked, but the chime was still ringing in our ears.

Jack was waiting. He came from out of the rain towards the TARDIS, practically beaming with delight at seeing her again. At seeing me.

Amy rushed through the doors creaking and practically throwing herself on Jack's longcoat. Cold puddles splashed beneath her boot.

"Hey, gorgeous," she said sexy and he smiled. I'd caught her fixing her hair in the reflection of the TARDIS viewscreen turned off at the time. I told her Jack was waiting for her. Run along Pond.

She didn't want me thinking it was a big deal to her. Kept saying she wasn't the marrying type.

"You stole my line," Jack grinned at her and he could barely fight off her kiss. He ripped his lips away from hers. Jack the Ripper.

"Now where were we? You want to continue where we left off?" she asked teasing.

Jack smiled from ear to ear but his infamous charm would lose out to a growing sense of desperation within him. His pulse started to race because the bulb of the TARDIS wouldn't dwindle.

"Maybe later," he said while moving her aside. "Right now I have to see the Doctor."

"No, you can't," Amy told him, splashing back into the time-traveller's path again. "He said he won't talk to you."

"What?"

Like I need defending:

"Don't. He just gets like that. He's had a rough day. Just let him be and he'll be fine in a couple of minutes."

But sadly Jack couldn't stand waiting any longer. Not this close.

"You don't understand. I need to talk to him. Seriously, my life depends on it. I'm sorry. I've just been waiting for this moment a long time."

He knocked on the blue front door and laughed desperately that he had to knock again, knowing it'd just been unlocked mere moments before. I'd locked it.

"Doctor! Oh, no. You're not doing this to me again! Not now!"

He'd endured all day without answers. He had been so angry and so bitter for so long, for decades, but he'd forgotten how much fun it had been running alongside me. Saving the universe took priority.

He wanted answers but what could I tell him? He weren't to know of his future. He's a fixed point in time and space because of his immortality. I couldn't give him any spoilers no matter how hard he begged for it.

"'Aloha'. That's what the Hawaïans say, which is very apt since it means both 'hello' and 'goodbye' at the same time.

"Aloha," the Doctor said as he weakly waved a hand at Denise and she smiled just as faintly. He dropped it, shifting awkwardly beside the nurse sitting on the side of Amy's bed.

"Of course, in France it's 'Au Revoir'. Literally, 'till we see each other again'," the Doctor continued. "which is beautiful in its own way. Lies always are."

His eyelids grew heavier.

"If I ever have last words that's what I'd like them to be," he continued. "Just that. 'Goodbye.'

A very good bye. The best."

Denise started crying.

"I'm sorry..." the Doctor said.

"No, it's not you," she said.

"Is it your sister?" the Doctor asked.

All this time she was helping so many others face the aftermath of their darkest hours that she'd neglected her own. Trying to do the right thing, what her sister would've wanted her to do, had been her way of atoning, she guessed. Now she hated herself for it; this and her unintended hypocrisy. She'd told the Doctor 'someone should remember their faces' and it wasn't a lie, but she couldn't bear to think of the death of her sister.

She could barely raise her voice to tell him. Saying it out loud meant that it had actually happened. With every passing second her sister would merely become a footnote in the story of her life, fading into the background or disappearing into thin air.

Back home there was still a drawing with her name on it hidden in a hatbox under her bed.

She missed her so much. She missed her strength.

"She died. Last week. Typhoid..." Denise mustered. "It wasn't pretty..."

The Doctor pouted. "It never is."

When she started to cry even harder the Doctor panicked. He tried to apologize saying he didn't mean to drag her sister into this but she said she was all right. More lies...

She hadn't even been there when she died. Never caught her last words. Never said goodbye. And now she'll never know.

"It's not your fault," the Doctor said generically.

"I'm not a child!" Denise snapped back, although she wished to be. To return to those simpler days, those happier days together at their grandmother's farm.

"Every story has an ending. A final page. Death gives us size. Gives us meaning..."

He tried to be comforting. He just wasn't very good at it.

"Your sister was your inspiration to you. Of course she would've wanted you to cry. It's a sad death that no-one cries for, or a very pitiful one. Like a good friend of mine once said: 'It's not the years of my life that matter, but the life in my years.' Was she happy? Would she have wanted you to be happy? Then do something about it!

Make her death matter. Make it count. Life is what you make of it!

Life isn't always wonderful. It's complex and layered and big and small and simple all at the same time. One butterfly flapping its wings in Tokyo doesn't normally affect anything big. Sometimes things just follow the usual patterns. Those are your Tuesdays and your boring Wednesdays and your Thursdays and Fridays...but ever so often there comes along a Saturday when impossible and amazing things happen...all because a butterfly flapped its wings."

"My sister is a butterfly?"

"Quite possibly..." the Doctor tried to save it but it was beginning to slip through his fingers. "But no. Time is flexible. Time cán be rewritten. In small ways...in BIG ways...The future is yours."

"And what about my sister's future? What about Bernárd's future?"

It was the Doctor's turn to fall silent, if just for a short while.

"Jack..." he started to tell. "pounded the doors of the TARDIS one last time before I stepped outside into the dark."

"Doctor," he said.

"Jack," I replied.

I told Amy to get back in the TARDIS.

"Why?"

"Just get inside. Nikola needs more bandages."

"He's got plenty," Amy replied seeing right through my lie. "What don't you want me to hear? Doctor, what's wrong?"

"He's angry," Jack chuckled. He mocked me so Amy told him off with a slap on his shoulder.

"Be nice," Amy told me.

"No," I said tired. "No, this isn't one of those days."

"No, is this the day you dump me again?" he interjected hurt. "After all I've been through to find you? Why, Doctor?"

And I'm ashamed to say I got mad at him. I projected all my pent up anger at the captain and all the ache I'd suffered that fateful day and it hurt my throat just to say it.

"This isn't about you! Why does always everything have to be about you?"

"How can you be so wrong? Everything I do has been for you!"

I bit my lip in quivering rage.

"Everything?"

"Everything," Jack said. "For two decades. And you give me nothing."

I started to shake. I could barely stand on my own two feet anymore. I could barely see. It started to worry Amy.

"Doctor, are you all right?"

"Captain..." I said. "Why don't you tell Amy what happened to Bernárd? You remember him, don't you?"

The general told me when I was rummaging through his stuff to save Nikola. I think I made a mess of his dataroom but strangely he let me.

"He told me you made him a promise," the general told me. He asked me what to tell Gustave and for a second I considered lying.

"Jack, what's he saying?" Amy asked. She remembered the boy that had stood by Gustave Eiffel's side beyond her cell bars and she remembered the body we found on the Eifffel Tower. Jack remembered him too. They had both died that morning but only one of them woke.

Foreknowledge had changed the details.

That new day two bodies would have been found on the Eiffel Tower and in the bulkhead would be carved a new word. Innocent Bernárd had carved it with his last breaths and scratched it into the metal until his hands started to bleed. In his final moment he decided to take control of the little he had left. The bulkhead rewritten, said:

TORCHWOOD

Jack watched in horror how Amy backed away from him.

"You waited two decades," I said to him. "but you will have to wait far longer because I won't help you."

"I didn't have any other choice! It had to happen!"

"Time had been rewritten! It didn't have to happen!"

"I couldn't save him!"

"You could've tried!"

"Doctor, we both know that if I hadn't done what I did we wouldn't be here having this conversation! And you know that! Time consuming paradoxes like that would've ripped a hole in the space-time continuum. The boy hád to die. So don't blame me. You knew all along this would happen! One kid to save the universe. That's it."

"An innocent dies and that's it?"

"Look, I'm sorry, but there's nothing left to say about it. What's done is done."

"Then it's over. Done. Your words, not mine."

Jack grinned. He couldn't believe it. "If that's the way you really feel about it..."

"I do."

"So it's over..."

His eyes wandered to Amy and she looked away.

"But Doctor...what about me? My condition?"

"I can't fix you, Jack," I said to him. "But you already know that."

"I can't die!"

"The irony isn't lost on me. We'll meet again one day, but not like this."

Maybe one day I'd forgive him. Just not today.

"I'm not your Doctor anymore."

Jack left into the night and at the moment the final chime had struck midnight it was the 7th of May 1889. But the night was young and far from over.

"Where does that leave us?" Jack asked Amy. A question and then a broken smile, but Amy couldn't stand to talk to him any longer. She didn't know what to say or what to feel. Fear or disgust or disappointment; they all disappeared into the void. A silence no conversation could fill.

Jack smiled again because he knew what was about to come to pass. A cruel universe conspired to put a wedge between him and his answers. His cure. Even his happiness.

"I can't believe you did that," Amy said. She couldn't even look him in the eyes.

"It's not who I am. Ask the Doctor. He knows I'm a good man. Tell him to come back for me. Tell him to forgive me."

"Is that all you want?"

"That and maybe your phone number."

"What?" she said. "Are you serious? Are you being serious...right now?"

Jack was lost for words. Amy had taken his breath away. She's as sharp as a knife. She cuts straight to the point. She's far cleverer than anyone thinks, even herself...

"No, Amy, I'm not trying...just please..." Jack tried to piece together. "Listen, I'm sorry. I'll do better. Be better."

"You better be."

His smile vanished as Amy wiped away a tear. She was done.

"I should get back in case the Doctor needs me."

"Should I call you? 1989, huh?" Jack desperately tried one final time but she'd stopped listening.

She slammed the door in his face. It slammed so loud he still heard it 100 years later. He knew he deserved it. He yelled he was sorry but the TARDIS didn't care. He'd been so desperate. So alone.

Releasing the TARDIS handbrake felt like tugging a heartstring. For Amy the deathly silence would become unbearable. She'd stormed out of her conversation with Jack to unleash her wrath upon me.

"Is this what you do?" she said furious. She didn't even know what she was saying anymore. She just had to take it out on someone. "You're a bad influence on people."

"That hurts," I said.

In the orange light she looked even more pristine ginger. Sometimes there's beauty in anger.

"What did he mean when he said you knew all along?"

I pretended to be busy piloting the TARDIS.

"When are you finally going to talk to me? Ever?"

"I can't tell you."

"Can't or won't?"

"Because if I did then you'd hate me."

"I already hate you," she spoke savagely while I tried to keep the peace.

"No, you don't."

She wasn't objective anymore. She wasn't talking sense. Emotions had gotten the best of her and I should know. They'd overtaken me. I changed the subject knowing she'd hate me for it. I'd make it up to her. I'd bring her someplace nice and quiet later. No monsters or shenanigans this time. Just beauty, somewhere out there in the cosmos. A place of calm, because right now this wasn't it.

This conversation had become too serious for my tastes. There was a mood in the TARDIS that just wouldn't disperse. An angerness that clotted the silence as if a big cartoon stormcloud was hovering over our heads. It had to stop, before someone would get hurt.

"Oi, Nikola! Stop fiddling with the TARDIS! Get out of there! Humans! You're like children! I leave you alone for five seconds and you're already dissecting my engine!"

Oh, I loved that about humans.

The Serbian-born American immigrant rose from underneath the TARDIS suspiciously rebuttoning his sleeves. He was still fragile. Ever so often he'd get a shock from the things he came in touch with or actually, quite the reverse, as he shocked everything else. He became afraid of what would happen if he touched things. The very air was charged by his presence.

"I feel very peculiar," he said and I couldn't tell if he was distressed or simply fascinated.

He was still looking rather pale since we'd patched his neutrons and tied his atoms back to this dimension.

"Don't worry," I said. "The effects will fade in time when you've reassimilated with reality."

Amy was still pouting as she'd sat down in one of the leather springy seats by the stairs.

"But right now I'd be more than glad if you would refrain from touching things."

A sharp bolt of lightning then shot from Nikola's hand as it connected to the TARDIS core.

"And don't point at things! As a matter of fact, just put your hands in your pockets for now. That'll do. Trust me."

"With pleasure," Nikola added as he let them slide into his worn black tuxedo pants.

I spinned on the spot peering over everything but I couldn't find him.

"Where's Simon?" I said clasping my hands together with a smile.

"Who?" Nikola said.

I rushed up the staircase after a thought but would emerge out from under the lower doorway after having cut a corner. It's easy when you know how. Breaks the ice at parties.

"What's the point in showing you all of time and space when you're not there to see it?" I nattered.

"I'm not known for my patience," the Doctor told Denise. "However I have been telling this story for over 7 hours now. Or 2 years depending on your point of view."

"He's in the Zero Room!" Amy finally said.

"What's he doing in there?" I yelled back at her from the other side of the control room.

"What'd you think?"

Nemo was in there, recovering. Simon had his eye on him from the start. But before I could even make a step into their direction they had already joined us in the control room.

His voice came from the lower levels.

Simon walked up the stairs into the console room but his eyes were filled with fear. We thought he'd been the one that yelled but then we saw the man behind him pushing a gun into his back. Nemo's mind had finally found solid ground.

Simon talked to him in his absent state of mind, while the former captain muttered like a madman. He thought another man's mutterings would make no difference.

No-one had listened to him all day and he didn't think anyone ever would.

He was wrong.

"Remember me?" Nemo said. He pushed Simon away below and pointed the gun at us. We realized we probably had to put our hands in the air.

Still the prisoner obsessed with escape, he sought out all exits and lost track of the TARDIS inner architecture. MC Escher would've loved it.

"Your ship..." he said. "It's magnificent."

"Thank you," I said proud.

"I'll take it."

"Not really the response I was looking for. I'm not selling."

"I'm not buying," Nemo said.

"You just lost your ship!"

"Because of you!" he rightly pointed out.

"So, what now? You're just going to try again? Start over?"

"Maybe I will."

"Is that what you really want?" I told him. "To just go back to who you were? This isn't your life anymore, Nemo. Everything's changed now. And you can change too. If you want to."

"I don't need to change."

"You don't really believe that," Amy told him. "I was in your mind, remember? I read your thoughts."

"That was a lifetime ago," he grumbled. She managed to distract him briefly, but not long enough for me to reach anything. My hands were still up.

"You told me I would have another life! A better life! So why am I still here?"

"I don't know," I admitted. Amy didn't know why I was looking at her then. She still doesn't.

"But let me find out," I pressed on. "Let me help you. Tell me what you remember. What happened in your other life? What changed?"

"Nothing changed. Nothing ever changes," Nemo said. "My life was changed even before I was born and it still doesn't change who I am. There were thousands of versions of me on that flight deck wrapped in chains. Alone I am no-one."

"That was then. This is now! You can change that! You can change all of it!"

"How, Doctor? What can one man do? I don't even have a name!"

"You are Nemo," I told him. "Remember. You have a new life now. You are-"

That's when the impossible occurrred to me.

"My home is long gone. All I had was my ship and even that you took away from me."

The paradox was still unwinding. Time was still changing. The fluctuations must've hidden him from me. I should've been able to sense it but he was wrapped in layers and layers of temporal anomalies. And his face! Maybe that was yet to happen, yet to change...

I didn't know at the time.

"The universe isn't fair," he said. Again. "Maybe it's not me that should change. It's the universe that should change!"

I just started to realize that I had met him before, a second time, at the heart of a glass dimension...a man without a name. No-one. Nemo. Nameless.

He would peer into the untempered schism and see the shadow. He was a Time Lord and he barely knew it. He was an echo travelling in reverse. Where was the source of the sound? Lost in time?

This was him before he got trapped there somehow. He'd told me I was the one to have imprisoned him there. By accident or intent? I didn't know. That was all yet to come. And Penny...

"I won't be at another man's mercy ever again. No-one should be," he said. "You were right, Doctor. It's what you told me. I can change the future. Change the past. I can strive to be better. I can make the universe better. That is who I am. That is my birthright."

"What?!"

"You were your own undoing and now you'll be the universe's undoing!" I exclaimed. "D'you think that's an improvement?!"

He ignored me.

"Ask yourself this, Doctor," he said to me as he slowly aimed his weapon in between my eyes.

"Would the universe be a better place without you in it?"

And I smiled at death.

"Good question," I said quite confidently, because there was really nothing to fear from an empty gun. I watched him empty his clip hours ago.

Of course in times like those you do wonder whether there's one shot left in the chamber. It only takes one to change your life. One butterfly flapping its wings.

"Arguably, the best question."

"Yes," Amy said and the stormcloud vanished.

Through a veil of fears and tears she stood up and made her stand. She stood up for me. She forgave me. And I didn't cry. I definitely didn't cry.

"Besides," I finally managed to utter. "Your gun clip's empty."

After a momentary stare came a sigh and he relented. Nemo let the gun fall to the floor where it bounced off the glass.

"Goodbye, Doctor," he said and within moments I watched him flip open his time vortex manipulator a second time that day (but not in chronological order) and with a few buttons and a flash he'd disappeared into thin air. He was gone.

But we would meet again.

"Anyone for some ice-cream?" I said, breaking the tension. Amy dodged my smile. More lies.

I dropped Nikola off at his hotel telling him I would gladly meet him again one day (and I would) and I think he took Nemo's gun. Or at least I never found it again...

Some say Nikola Tesla tried to invent a raygun in his lifetime. I say he tried to reverse engineer one. Oh, what a legend.

And Simon...I think he went on to found UNIT...or at least the idea of UNIT. A Unified Intelligence Task Force. He too was a man ahead of his time, for the world wouldn't accept his vision for another three to six decades. A vision of an united Earth banding together against an even bigger threat from outer space. And time.

You can't say fear isn't a good motivator for change.

And as for Amy...

I took her to see the Eiffel Tower's wedding. I thought she might like the change of scenery and besides I'm a sucker for ending stories with a wedding. It was a sunny day in 2007 and it was a great ceremony. I even got a new bow tie just for the occasion.

I think a little bit of Validium survived to merge with the remaining Tower's metal and is finally at peace. I think that's all it wanted in the end. Just a little bit of love.

We gave our best wishes to the newlyweds. An American in love with the Eiffel Tower. Who would've seen that coming?

Amy cheered them on plus even wooing them (imagine the honeymoon), but when the ceremony ended and the noises died down we walked in the Tower's shadow. Just talking. It was the calm I'd promised her.

We were a few years off but already she felt more at ease. More at home. She even made more nasty comments about my bow tie.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she finally asked quietly. A soft wind blew across the vast square.

"I was busy," I said. I don't know what to do with my hands when I'm nervous so I just put them in my pockets.

"You know how it goes. We got separated. Then the Eiffel Tower got stolen. And then you were in an iron mask and pirates were trying to kill us and then a glass castle...It's all a bit of a mess when you think about it."

She laughed. She was better now.

I would've told her there were more fish in the sea despite how corny that may have sounded. I would've told her she still had a future waiting for her somewhere, even though she probably wouldn't believe me.

When she caught me staring I pretended to look over her shoulder.

"Travelling with me," I said to her finally. "Is it worth it?"

I needed to know.

"Of course," she said.

"Worth the risk, I mean."

A faint smile blossomed.

"What have I got to lose?"

Everything. That's what I was afraid of, except I didn't say that part out loud. Instead I smiled and lead her back to the TARDIS.

It was time for some well-earned rest.


	42. Break a Leg!

She called his name, but he didn't hear her. Amy woke up somewhere in the point between dream and reality when things go all blurry and stop making sense and then you wake up and remember. And start forgetting.

"Doctor?" she asked whilst rubbing her eyes. Still couldn't adjust to her new surroundings. Memories get all mixed up. So it took her a while to rediscover it was still France in the year 1917 CE and this was still a hospital. It had become awfully quiet when the Doctor had stopped talking. Maybe that's why she woke up.

The curtains smelled great (although some stains would never come out) but they'd obviously been recently washed and put up again.

Amy heard men laughing. She still couldn't believe she could understand what they were saying. She'd always been rubbish at French in school. If only she'd known the Doctor back then. But of course she did but now she tried hard not to think about that.

"Doctor?" she tried again, this time more assertive and aware than before. She shoved open the curtains and they made a hissing sound as they slid across their rails. She'd almost pushed them over.

She found that she was the only one with curtains. Probably a courtesy to give her privacy from all the men who were lying in their bunks as if they were back in military school, all out in the open and as many packed together as the hospital staff could manage. Some were playing cards, others were staring at the ceiling, more were uncomfortably trying out their new crutches or eyepatches, while one was still sleeping silently under white covers.

Amy looked at her own feet and found to her amazement she had two. That was new. She was surprised by what she'd become amazed by.

"Two legs," she said to herself. "Just two. Not three or four."

She couldn't even tell which was the fake one now. They both felt just as real and original, although her toenails really needed clipping.

Morning light shone through the large windows into the ward. Amy found her clothes on a pile lying next to her. She could finally get out of these ragged hospital clothes. In private.

She shut the curtains again.

The soldiers tried to keep morale up but they did so in silence. Most of them were still expecting more bombs to fall. Others were reliving the deaths of their friends even with their eyes closed.

Amy had been out there, even if it had been for just a second, in the mud where she thought she'd never get clean ever again but somehow she'd made it.

She knew she couldn't possibly imagine what went on in their heads. She didn't want to know. She knew it was for the best.

She knew she was lucky not to have been born in their time. Oh, she couldn't wait to get back to her own. She felt like she was trespassing and that maybe she should apologize to someone or ask permission. Something got stuck at the back of her throat as she passed them by. She would never mock their suffering.

Amy clung to a passing nurse's skirt and if the girl hadn't stopped she would've jumped her for sure.

"Can I ask you something?" she said. "I'm looking for my friend. The Doctor."

"You need a doctor?"

"No, you daft lass. That's what he calls himself. _The_ Doctor. Wears a tweed jacket and bow tie and has stupid hair. Looks like a school teacher with elbow patches...or maybe that's a few decades too soon. He looks like a young...old...man...with braces and he talks alot. Like me, apparantly."

She rolled her eyes at herself.

"You mean the man that arrived here with you?"

"Yes!" Amy exclaimed, glad that someone finally understood her. She fought the urge to hug her. "That's who I'm talking about! Do you know where he's gone to?"

The nurse nodded and pointed to the sleeping man in the far corner. "He's over there. Be gentle though. When he came in he was very badly hurt. I don't think the surgeon was able to remove all the shrapnel..."

"Shrapnel? What'd you mean?"

"Suffice to say it seems he's doing a lot better. As do you. Didn't you come in here with...just one leg?"

"I got better."

When she'd finally shook off the nurse's suspicions she moved through the crowd of wounded soldiers on her way to the man lying in the last bed. They all seemed to stare at her like sailors spotting a mermaid on the shore. Her blackened coloured clothes clashed with the white linens and grey generic pajamas. Some still had the sweat, blood and dirt on their often bandaged faces. Others were missing fingers.

She told herself to look ahead and not waver from her objective.

She knew what the nurse had told her but she didn't accept it. She felt like she was still dreaming.

The Doctor couldn't get hurt. That was impossible. He'd always get back up again. _Always. _With a spring in his step and a smile on his face.

The man in that bed couldn't be the Doctor. He was hardly breathing.

"Doctor?"

She carefully prodded the man's shoulder with a crooked finger.

"Ow..."

A soft broken voice came from the bed. The Doctor rolled over to his back.

"What'd you do that for?" He was as pale as a sheet and there were red scratches in his face.

She prodded him again. On purpose.

"Ow!"

"What are you doing? What is this?" she said. He was scaring her.

Where was the man that had told her that story all night?

"I'm hurt! Why else am I in a hospital? OW!"

"Where were you last night?" Amy asked him.

"In surgery. The surgeon did an amazing job but to be fair I'm going to have to let the Sisters of the Infinite Schism have a look just to be on the safe side..."

He groaned in agony as he tried to get up and Amy inserted her arms behind and under him for support. When the covers slid off him she found him completely dressed (bow tie, braces and all), however his wardrobe lay in tatters: burnt and blackened from the front and on the edges and sometimes full of holes and tears.  
Her trouser leg and jacket weren't any different. Her entire foot was bare. All caused by the same explosion that had overtaken her.

"You look terrible," The Doctor said.

"Yeah, well, you don't."

"Really?" he asked gullibly.

"Yes!" Amy told him filled with sarcasm as she held his torso in her arms. "You look amazing! But let's get you some help anyway. And after that we'll go shopping. We'll finally get rid of that bow tie."

"...never," the Doctor spoke in between pained grunts.

They locked arms and shoulders and managed to synchronize their walking patterns to keep the weakened Time Lord moving. Amy knew she'd have to get him to the TARDIS. He'd be safer there.

"Come on," she said when she was done looking around for other Doctors.

It was something he'd said to her long ago but she couldn't remember exactly. The TARDIS helped him heal. Amy would repay the favor.

"I think that nurse liked me," he said.

"_Course she did._ Can you walk?"

"My legs need some time to readjust to the ground and then I'll be fine. Time Lords are fast healers. Always have been."

The Doctor slipped that very second and found footing by performing the weirdest dance and all the while Amy carried him as he leaned on her and put his arms around her neck.

"Don't worry," he told her. "You're doing fine. The TARDIS isn't far off. Just another mile or so. Maybe two."

And they hadn't even descended the stairs yet. Or checked out of the hospital.

But in the end they together managed to find their way on to the hospital's gravelly courtyard and through the iron gates. It's these little big moments that count. And the Doctor knew that.

His future self watched the pair from the shadow of the hospital feeling the wisdom of age and the burden of memories. With a final smile he straightened his bow tie as he swaggered off back to his TARDIS, knowing they'd both be more than fine.

Because their adventures were only just beginning.

**THE END**


End file.
